Baking time: Thanksgiving pies

On Wednesday, after work I got right on track with making my pies. Now, I was a bit apprehensive. I hadn't bought backup pie crusts, in case my homemade crusts didn't work out. I had asked Jenni how hard it was to make crust, and she told me it would be easy, so I held my breath and went for it.

I got the ingredients ready. I was using this recipe from Ina and you didn't need much, just butter, shortening, flour, sugar, salt and water.

I picked Ina's recipe, cause it was all done in the food processor, and that seemed pretty easy to me. First, you pulse the flour, sugar and salt to mix them all up.

Next add the diced butter and shortening (make sure it's all been chilled).

And pulse til the butter is in "pea sized pieces." Mine looked a little more like a crumbly meal or little pebbles.

Then add the ice water until the dough forms a ball. (This one is almost there.)

Then I dumped it all out and formed it into a big disc, wrapped it in plastic and put it in the fridge to rest.

Then it was time to roll it out. This is where it got complicated, not the actual rolling, but finding a rolling pin. I thought Pop had one, and he thought I had it, but the rolling pin was nowhere to be found. I looked around the kitchen for something to use and a bottle of wine worked perfectly.

Getting the dough into the pan was a bit tricky, but I fixed the few tears that happened. And it looked pretty good, I think.

I made two batches of pie crust, since I was making two pies, an apple and a pumpkin. My crusts baked up all pretty.

The pie crusts were so easy to make. If you haven't tried making your own yet, just go for it. It's so much easier (and yummier) than you think.