Fruit pie filling...in a hurry!

Here's a great idea for when you want a fresh baked friut pie but don't want to do all of the work for it.

Goof-Proof Pie Crust:
4 cups flour
2t salt
1T sugar  
1¾ c shortening  
1 ¾ c ICE water
1 egg
1T white vinegar      

Whisk flour, sugar, and salt, cut in shortening. Combine water, egg, and vinegar together. Stir into flour mix.  Divide into 5, make into flat balls, freeze.  Makes 5 1-crust pie shells.
NOTE:  if you prefer to use premade pie crust, keep pie shells or rounds of Never Fail Pie Crust in the freezer.

Apple Pie filling:  
Eyeball method:   Peel, core, slice apples.  This is all done to your family’s taste. Put the sliced apples into a large pan. Add sugar to taste, cinnamon and nutmeg as desired. Add just a bit of water to the pan to keep the apples from scorching. Cook until the apples are somewhat tender…you don’t want mush. At this point, you can bottle or freeze your filling as desired.

To bottle the filling: fill HOT quart jars to within about ½ inch of the top. (If you’re going to leave out the spices, you might want to put a teaspoon of lemon juice on the top to prevent browning).  Wipe of the bottle rim, cap, put the ring on the bottle. Process for 10 minutes in a water bath or a steam canner.
                                 
To Freeze pie filling:  Line an EMPTY pie plate with 2 long pieces of plastic wrap crossing each other.  Transfer your hot apples to a bowl to slightly cool.  Adjust your spices to the apples, and add 3 Tablespoon quick cooking tapioca; stirring gently to mix.  Pour/layer your slices into the pie plate, fold the plastic wrap over the pie filling to cover. Put in the freezer until solid. When it’s a solid disk, remove from the pie pan and put your “fruit Frisbee” into a heavy plastic freezer bag. Also works with peaches & boysenberries.

To make your pie:
Frozen pie filling: thaw your shell, slip the fruit Frisbee into the shell, cover with a crumble topping, Bake 400 deg. For 15 minutes, then down to 350 until done.

Bottled filling will need to have the tapioca added. Open bottles, put in bowl, stir in 3T instant tapioca. Pour into unbaked pie shell, either cover with another pie shell or use the crumble topping.

Crumb topping:
1/3 C sugar  
¾ C flour
6T COLD/frozen  butter.

Process with knife blade in food processor.  Sprinkle over pie, bake on foil lined baking sheet.

For apple sauce keep cooking the apples past the pie filling stage and make chunky apple sauce, or go all the way to apple sauce consistency.  Apples that are on the bland side can be kicked up a notch with a bit of lemon juice which also keeps the apple sauce from browning.

NOTE: These recipes were for apple pie but can be applied to other types of fruit pie as well.

Thanks to Luana Wells for this great demo!