How a girl like me — a girl whose idea of the perfect food is a chocolate buttercream layered sponge cake, a girl whose childhood dinners were considered incomplete without a slice of fudge-frosted Entenman’s tacked on to the end of them, a girl who could eat this morning, noon, and night — ended up being the mother of a cake-hater like my 9-year-old? I’ll never know. What I do know is that on the big day, birthday pie works fine, too.
Cranberry-Apple Birthday Pie
2 9-inch frozen pie crusts, such as Pillsbury or Trader Joe’s (or if you have Martha Stewart’s pâte brisée in the freezer, lucky you!)
5 to 6 apples, peeled and sliced (about 5 cups)
1/4 cup fresh cranberries (or to taste)
1⁄3 cup sugar
1⁄2 teaspoon cinnamon
Dash of nutmeg
Juice from 1⁄2 lemon
6 to 8 dots of butter
1 egg, beaten
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Lay the first piece of dough inside a pie dish. Toss the apples and cranberries in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon juice. Toss, then dump into prepared pie dish. Dot the fruit with butter, cover with second pie dough, using your fingers to seal it around the edges. Using a knife, cut a few ventilation slits in the top. Brush the crust with egg wash.
Bake for 40 minutes. If the crust is looking too brown before the fruit is bubbling out the side, cover with foil. Once the pie is cool, add candles. Serve with vanilla ice cream.
Maybe it’s an October thing. My husband’s birthday is coming right up and he always wants apple pie. Because of the close proximity of the dates, we frequently celebrate on Halloween, so we have a long series of annual photos with the top crust “carved” like a Jack-O’Lantern. I’m totally with you on cake – I love it! I’m not so much into eating pie, but they are fun to make. Yours look just beautiful.
That pie looks amazing! It’s funny you should mention Martha Stewart’s pate brisee because I do have some in my freezer. Would you suggest pre-baking the bottom pie crust before adding the filling like I would for a pumpkin pie? Or just bake everything at the same time?
i’m not a huge pie fan (i’m a cake monster too) but your recipe looks too good and too easy to pass up at least an attempt. and you had me at ice cream.
Served pie from Briermere Farm Stand on Long Island’s North Fork at my wedding in lieu of cake. A big hit with our guests
I find baking cakes too fussy, but I love pie! Especially with the store bought crusts. (Honestly, I use the Pillsbury and I can’t tell the difference.)
I would much rather a gooey chocolate cake than pie. But, oddly, my daughter (who just turned 18 last week) is also a big pie fan. So we had to pies on her birthday. I agree with Tara, maybe it is an October thing?
My husband is very anti-cake as well! So we often have pie, brownies or cheesecake or carrot cake for his birthdays (apparently cheesecake and carrot cake don’t really fall into the ‘cake’ category for him…)
Happy birthday, Abby!
I’m a pie person, myself, and apparently spawned one as well. When my son turned nine, he asked for birthday pie–chocolate, though!
I have a pie lover too, but it is because his favorite number is pi. Where we live, there is a pie shop that on Pi Day (March 14, 3/14, get it?), gives pie prizes for reciting digits of pi. Last year, my son recited 100 digits, and got a gift certificate for four pies – he’s in heaven.
Anyway, as for apple pie, try leaving out the crans, adding some ground cloves and a slug of bourbon to the apples. We got this from Ken Haedrich’s PIE book, and it is our delicious go-to now.
I make Martha Stewart’s Mile High Apple pie for my sons birthday every year. I will have to show him this one, he loves apples and cranberries, he begs for dried cranberries in his lunchbox.
I am a cake disliker as well.
This is funny, Cup of Jo just posted a classic birthday cake this morning. I’m in such a birthday mood now, I’m going to have to bake something! (http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-best-buttermilk-birthday-cake-youll.html)
David’s birthday is next month, and he would WAY rather have apple pie than cake. I love the idea of adding fresh cranberries!
My son always wants pumpkin pie for his October birthday. In college, he used to tell his friends that his mom had never baked him a birthday cake. And only later tell them about the pie.
coming to SF anytime??
Beautiful pie! I may have to make this this weekend! I would love to win the Barilla pasta give-away! I think I would make one of our favorites: linguine with lightly fried zucchini, olive oil, garlic, basil and parmesean.
Would love to win the Barilla pasta too. We eat pasta at least once a week and we would celebrate with our favorite linguine with white clam sauce pasta !
We have lots of apples from a recent apple-picking outing, and this apple pie recipe sounds awesome! My pasta-loving kids have been counting down the days to World Pasta Day (they don’t need much of an excuse to celebrate!), and we would love to win the Barilla pasta giveaway. We plan on making spaghetti tacos tonight, which we copied from the iCarly show and are always a lot of fun. Thanks!!
The Barilla pasta give-away looks awesome! We would celebrate with Baked spaghetti!
I would sooooooo love to win the Alessi pasta pot and celebrate with Barilla lasagna noodles in my favorite lasagna & old school bolognese recipe from the WONDERFUL Chef Alex Guarnaschelli. OMG – it is such a great recipe and I always use Barilla no-cook noodles to make it. 🙂
The Barilla pasta giveaway is great! My kids favorite meals all involve pasta. If I win, I’d make chicken and pasta in garlic sauce with some homemade bread to celebrate.
My kids have been asking for pasta all week and would celebrate with our favorite pasta from the Silver Palate.
I hope I win. We would celebrate with penne a la vodka – my daughters favorite food! But she calls it penne very vodka!
Barilla pasta giveaway — We celebrate with spaghetti and meatballs.
I love the look of these fancy pies. They would make a healthy dessert after a great Barilla spaghetti dinner!