Peach Pie a la Erin

On Thanksgiving morning, before the Packers vs. Lions football game began (it's a game I don't miss, having grown up in Wisconsin and lived in Michigan for six years prior to moving to Texas), I decided I needed to make a pie. Never mind the fact that we had pies coming and desserts made and a birthday cake leftover from the night before.

Since this was a spur of the moment baking decision, the kind of pie I would make depended on what my grandma had in her pantry/refrigerator/freezer. As it turned out - and lucky for all of us who eventually enjoyed the pie - she had ziplock bags full of freshly picked and then frozen peaches "cluttering up" her freezer.

I searched the internet for peach pie recipes, found one I thought was doable given 1) the ingredients we had on hand, 2) my pie-making skills, and 3) the time I had before the game started, and got to work. I adjusted the recipe a little along the way, mostly because I like to pretend like I'm an experienced enough cook/baker to do such things, and the end result was...AMAZING. And ugly. (I overfilled the pie pan to the point that filling went everywhere while the pie was in the oven.) Amazing and ugly. But seriously, the pie was one of the best I've ever tasted, and because something that delicious deserves to be shared, here you go. Consider this an early Christmas present.

Peach Pie

Ingredients
- Store-bought double pie crust
- 6-8 peaches, peeled and chopped (I used thawed frozen-when-fresh peaches, but fresh peaches would of course work just as well)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 1 t. cinnamon
- 1 T. cornstarch
- 1 egg white

1. Place one pie crust in an 8- or 9-inch pie pan.

2. Combine the sugar, flour, butter, cinnamon, and cornstarch in a mixing bowl until the mixture resembles large crumbs. My butter was soft enough that I was able to accomplish this with a wooden spoon, but a hand mixer would have done the job just as well and would come in handy (pun intended :)) if the butter wasn't as soft.

3. Spoon a single layer of peaches onto the bottom pie crust, and top the peach layer with a single layer of the sugar mixture. Repeat 2 or 3 times, depending on the thickness of your layers and ending with the sugar mixture.

4. Using a pastry wheel cutter, pizza cutter, or knife, cut the second pie crust into thin strips, layer the strips over the top of the pie in a lattice pattern, and press the ends of the strips into the bottom pie crust.

5. Brush egg white over the crust.

6. Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. After 45 minutes, turn off the oven and let the pie rest in the oven for 10 additional minutes.

7. Cool and enjoy!

My apologies for not including a picture with this recipe. In the chaos of the morning I completely forgot to even pull out my camera. Not that you would have wanted to see a picture of my pie anyway - like I mentioned above, it was ugly. Delicious, but ugly. I'll definitely make a prettier pie, and take a picture of it, the next time around!