Boredom Breeds Baking

I have been spoiled being able to paint outside. Granted I have to beware of a little puppy who is constantly trying to jump up and bite my brushes but I am used to animal involvement in the making of art. I don't think a have ever produced a piece that didn't have cat hair glued into it. This morning I woke up to dreary weather and couldn't get motivated to work on my collage. I puttered around a bit then had the urge to bake something. I took fruit inventory coming up with a piece of watermelon, one orange, two pomegranates, three apples and a box of apricots. I pilfered thru Mick and Bec's stuff a little and came up with three more apples....apple and apricot pie it is.

I haven't made a pie since I was in elementary school and I think then I used a ready made crust. I started looking around for recipes and found one that highly recommended using vodka instead of water. I went rummaging thru the liquor cabinet but to no avail. I did find some butterscotch schnapps and thought it might come in handy. I have never seen dark brown butterscotch schnapps before but it smelled really good.

There were lots and lots of variations of crusts so I just kind of made a combination of a few. Here is my recommendation for the day. Make sure you have all the ingredients you need BEFORE you throw half of them in a bowl. I forgot about shortening. I don't know why I couldn't just use all butter for the crust but every recipe was babbling on about shortening. Well if mama's little baby loves it I could figure out how to make something like it. I never really knew what that can of CRISCO we had growing up contained and now I am glad. Up with transfats!! Using vegetable as a substitute was suggested on one website. I thought back to my disastrous attempt at making taramasalata. Who knew you had to use a specific type of fish roe? I did remember the olive oil thickening up pretty easily. After whipping some oil for about ten minutes with no results I remembered I had added white bread to make the live oil thick. I didn't think that would work out well in this case so I followed other instructions which said just mix oil and butter together. I know! I know! This can't be good!!! I am going vegetable shopping tomorrow!! But I did forge on and the dough for the crust seemed to come out ok. I chopped up the apples with the skin on and no this is not sheer laziness. I like skin on fruit and vegetables even in pies and salads. This is where the booze came in. Butterscotch goes well with apple so I used some to soak the apples in. I also added sugar and the apricots.

This is when I realized I had one other small problem....no pie pans. Once again, when you cook make sure you everything you need BEFORE you start. I went looking around in the cabinets but couldn't find anything. I did find one good critic. Even if my pie was a disaster, Rassie sure did like the left over dough on my hands.

So, my search produced nothing close to a pie shaped pan. The best I could come up with was a casserole dish. Apple and apricot pie casserole, Yay! I didn't make enough dough to cover the bottom of the and put a layer across the top so I made some crumble with macadamia nuts, brown sugar and more butterscotch schnapps.

Now I just have to bake it and see how it turns out.

One Hour Later.....Success!!! Matt likes my apple and apricot casserole anyway.