Cousin Time

Prior to traveling a long trip, I went to the library and found Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me with Apples, which led me to Tess Rafferty's Recipes for Disaster and a good explanation of why and how to make pies (Apple Pie: Because Store-Bought is for People Who Don't Love Their Boyfriends). She specifies a large amount of apple and blueberry for the filling and recommends making extra pie pastry and keeping it for later.

I recently became lucky enough to live next to my cousins. They socialize more than I do and dessert remains my favorite addition to the mix. With more relatives coming north to check out a college, we planned a dinner together and I, undecided between cake or pie, baked both sweets.

Seriously considering taking a piece out of the pie to leave at home for my main taster, who had other plans, I realized the better idea was to bake two pies, no stretch for the filling and used the extra pie pastry I stashed in the refrigerator. See what I did there? I ate a nice big piece long before the dinner party.

Also luckily, New York Times Cooking featured a Chocolate Guinness Cake in honor of the month of March, which I mixed up and ended up with extra Guinness to drink with my pie. The cooking time is 45 minutes to an hour and the skewer I inserted at 45 minutes came up with batter and I left it for 10 more minutes; too long. The bake was slightly dry. The pie tasted wonderfully of apples and blueberry with a super flakey crust I made from the "All-Butter Pie Crust" recipe from New York Times Cooking.  I plan to make Chocolate Guinness Cake again and see about baking a tender crumbed version.