Hi, I’m Valerie, and this is my first post here.  Jenny gave me an account here, so I thought I’d take advantage of it.

This year I made pies for our family’s Thanksgiving dinner.  I love making pastry, so I was super excited!  I decided to make two pecan pies, an apple pie, and a pumpkin pie.  The pumpkin pie was the classic recipe from Libby’s.  I love that recipe – it really doesn’t need any improvements.

I’ve never been a big fan of pecan pie, because it’s usually overwhelmingly sweet.  That’s why I was so glad to find this recipe, which uses less sugar.  Instead of drowning the flavor in syrupy sweetness, it uses molasses to give a rich, warm taste to compliment the pecans.  All of my aunts and uncles loved it.

The apple pie was also a fancier variation called Grandma Ople’s Apple Pie.  First I put the pie together, covering it with a woven lattice crust on top.  The exciting part was this caramel topping that I cooked over the stove, then poured over the whole top of the crust so it soaked down into the apples.  The pie ended up with this wonderful crispy top.