The house my parents bought has a functional wood burning stove and apple trees. This of course equals apple pie Laura Ingalls Wilder style,because honestly who want's to use a real oven when you have that thing? It's actually quite versatile and the temperature recorder on the oven door is surprisingly accurate so burning food is a non-issue. I quickly found myself beginning to enjoy the old fashioned feel of the cast iron pots and pans steaming and sizzling away as logs crackled away in the belly of the stove. I even discovered that there is something intrinsically calming about the site of a tea kettle always a-steam in a kitchen. And the rocking chair right next to the stove... A heavenly place to be-- it's possibly the warmest spot in the whole house. We actually used the stove to make most of Thanksgiving dinner and the apple pie was no exception. Since there are two apple trees I had originally thought to use the tree with the larger apples but I quickly discovered all the fruit had already fallen so I ended up using the apples from the shorter tree, I'm not sure what variety they are but they were much smaller and more tart. Still delicious though and very
crisp and crunchy which I
loved, there are few things worse then a soggy, mealy apple. (yuck.) Peeling the apples became a bit of a pain because they were smaller so of course more were needed and a few were lost to the kitchen floor in the process. In the end I think the smaller one's were a better choice, they were just tart enough to end up being perfectly sweet when it came time for the sugar, which threw yet another monkey wrench in my baking dreams. I had been feeling pretty good about the whole pie making experience after the apples had been peeled. I had the apples, main ingredient, all seemed to be well. Until I realized that I needed brown sugar, which of course we didn't have. Luckily we had precisely 2/3 cup of white sugar which was the exact amount of sugar I needed
and we had molasses.Brown sugar is in fact white sugar with molasses added so if you ever find yourself in a similar situation or you just want to try something new, it's a pretty simple process to make your own brown sugar.
Just add molasses to regular granulated sugar and stir--it's sticky so at first you won't feel like you're accomplishing anything but with a little persistence all will be well. Add a little or a lot depending on how dark you want your sugar to be and voila there it is. After the minor sugar debacle it was smooth sailing--my pie crust was a little lopsided but hey I'm an amateur what do you expect? We just added a few more logs to the fire to get the oven to the right temperature and in went the pie.The oven is a little finicky because the heat comes primarily from the left side where the wood burns so during cooking if you don't watch the food and turn it halfway through one side will be a little
crispier then the other. Also the bottom doesn't always have enough heat to cook so we had to set the pie on the stove top for a few minutes just to assure the bottom wouldn't be doughy. All in all it was a pretty decent pie. Not the prettiest thing in the world but very tasty!
The house my parents bought has a functional wood burning stove and apple trees. This of course equals apple pie Laura Ingalls Wilder style,because honestly who want's to use a real oven when you have that thing? It's actually quite versatile and the temperature recorder on the oven door is surprisingly accurate so burning food is a non-issue. I quickly found myself beginning to enjoy the old fashioned feel of the cast iron pots and pans steaming and sizzling away as logs crackled away in the belly of the stove. I even discovered that there is something intrinsically calming about the site of a tea kettle always a-steam in a kitchen. And the rocking chair right next to the stove... A heavenly place to be-- it's possibly the warmest spot in the whole house. We actually used the stove to make most of Thanksgiving dinner and the apple pie was no exception. Since there are two apple trees I had originally thought to use the tree with the larger apples but I quickly discovered all the fruit had already fallen so I ended up using the apples from the shorter tree, I'm not sure what variety they are but they were much smaller and more tart. Still delicious though and very crisp and crunchy which I loved, there are few things worse then a soggy, mealy apple. (yuck.) Peeling the apples became a bit of a pain because they were smaller so of course more were needed and a few were lost to the kitchen floor in the process. In the end I think the smaller one's were a better choice, they were just tart enough to end up being perfectly sweet when it came time for the sugar, which threw yet another monkey wrench in my baking dreams. I had been feeling pretty good about the whole pie making experience after the apples had been peeled. I had the apples, main ingredient, all seemed to be well. Until I realized that I needed brown sugar, which of course we didn't have. Luckily we had precisely 2/3 cup of white sugar which was the exact amount of sugar I needed and we had molasses.Brown sugar is in fact white sugar with molasses added so if you ever find yourself in a similar situation or you just want to try something new, it's a pretty simple process to make your own brown sugar.
Just add molasses to regular granulated sugar and stir--it's sticky so at first you won't feel like you're accomplishing anything but with a little persistence all will be well. Add a little or a lot depending on how dark you want your sugar to be and voila there it is. After the minor sugar debacle it was smooth sailing--my pie crust was a little lopsided but hey I'm an amateur what do you expect? We just added a few more logs to the fire to get the oven to the right temperature and in went the pie.The oven is a little finicky because the heat comes primarily from the left side where the wood burns so during cooking if you don't watch the food and turn it halfway through one side will be a little crispier then the other. Also the bottom doesn't always have enough heat to cook so we had to set the pie on the stove top for a few minutes just to assure the bottom wouldn't be doughy. All in all it was a pretty decent pie. Not the prettiest thing in the world but very tasty! 
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