Apples to apples

Continuing on our quest to use up a bushelful of apples before they rot, this week was the week of pies.  Apple pies of course!  Lucky for me, my bffl from high school, Sandy, has been in town for the past month and decided she wanted to spend the day doing something Fall-related.  Umm...apple pie baking?  It absolutely screams Fall!

So - two girls who have been friends since middle school, two recipes, a dozen or so apples, a butt-ton of butter, flour, and sugar, and about six hours of hard-ish work (plus gossip of course)...and we ended up with four amazing and delicious pies!  NBD!  We chose two types of pies - one fairly traditional recipe and one that is a bit more cake-like.  Unfortunately for me, I don't have one of those old-school, passed-down for multiple generations recipes so naturally I just Googled it.  That being said, if anyone would like to share their old-school, passed-down for multiple generations recipe for apple pie, please email me!

Apple of my eye

Fall is here, Fall is here, Fall is here(!)...Fall is my favorite season in case you couldn't tell.  And New England is such a wonderful region to be in during this time, so all you west coasters can be jealous of us for a change (and for about a month max).  The leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and apples are everywhere - mmmm apples.  Now, whoever decided to charge people extra so they can pick their own fruit is a genius.  I mean - I could totally buy apples from the store, but no...I'm going to drive an hour each way to pay twice as much per apple to go frolicking in an orchard and do the work myself.  Amazing.

Almond joy

K - so remember when I was all ambitious-like and wanted to post every week?  Hah.  So young...so naive!  But just to explain myself quickly: 3 days, 9 girls, 2 suites, and about 10 hours of sleep total.  Vegas my friends - such an amazing time but I needed a full week to even begin to recover.  Well worth it, but I'm le tired.

So now I'm back and ready to bake - assemble the minions!  To add a little spice to the blog, I decided to throw in something different - maybe some French Macarons?  First things first, macarons are not the same as macaroons which are those shredded coconut cookie-things.  Macarons are sandwiches made from two delicious, merengue-based cookies with a fun treat in between.  Note: I don't know if the whole spelling of macaron vs. macaroon holds true, but Wikipedia says so and I'm OK with that!