Cranberry Pie Bars

Don't have a hankering for pie? Well have all the glory that is PIE in bar form with these cranberry custard crumble bars. Start with the crust, like Ol' Grandma Pilgram always said. Start off by blending/obliterating a package of graham crackers and about half of a bag of nilla wafers untill that a mere crumbs. Poor the minced cardbord pieces into a bowl and add two sticks of butter. Mash until well-mixed and cover the bottom of any favorite cooking pan, but it must be rectangle or your bars won't pass the state Bar Exam. 

Here is where we messed up. We forgot to bake the crust by itself. If you bake it before adding the fillings, it will be easier to pick up the bars one by one. But we didn't, and it still turned out great! So bypassing the crust cooking, we moved along to the filling. Sewps easy! Un can of sweetened-condensed malk and Un 8 oz. glob of cream chee. Mix thouse twostar-crossed lovers together and you have one hell of a filling.

Then you want to pour the filling into the cooking pan, and spread it evenly. 

Really, the only thing that makes this a "cranberry pie" is the fact that we had a year supply of craisins. You could theoretically put anything ontop of this filling/crust. I'm talking lemon custard, blueberries, bananas, chocolate chips. You name it! Butt, we had an ungodly amount of craisins. We made a simple syrup (1 cup water, 1 cup sugar) heat in a saucepan until sugar is dissolved. We then added our craisins to our vigin meth and tossed them around until they were eventhly coated.

Even disperse the candied craisins on the filling. Preferably use a ton of the topping so it makes a nice thick layer. 

Now for the crumble! Basically it's the same as the crust (butter, gram crackers, and nillawaffers) but not at finely blended as the crust. We also added some brown singer to give it more flavor. 

And finally for the very top, we added water to some powdered sugar and drizzled it on the top to make it all fancy and whatnot. 

It might not be the cleanest dessert to enjoy, but it was still mighty good. 

Pumpkin Pie

I decided to be adventurous today and make a pumpkin pie from scratch. It's honestly not that hard, you just have to follow the directions and be good at improvising when you mess up following the directions. I started with the crust, because I know the dough would take a while to sit and cool in the fridge.

To make the dough, I just used 1 stick O'butter, 3-4 Tbsp of cold water, 1.25 cups of all purpose flour, 1.5 tsp of sugar, and 1/4 tsp of salt. Now that I typed all of those out it sounds like a lot, but trust me its not. First I added all of the dry cocaine-like ingredients and mixed them together till they were spread throughout the mixture. 

Next, I unwrapped the lolsquid (liquid/solid) butter. Make sure its room temperature because it will be easier to mix. Use a mixer or food processor to blend the cow cube with the dry mixture until the dough is in chunks the size of peas. If you are poor you could always use a whisk or a shoe to blend the dough, it's really up to you.

Now here is the tricky part. To make the dough solid but malleable, you have to add tablespoons of cold water one at a time to the mixture. Add the water one tablespoon at a time, mixing the dough in between each pour. I used 4 tablespoons of water, but you might need more or less depending on you measurements. If your dough can stick together and does not fall apart like the british empire, it should be good. 

Smash your Pillsbury dough-cake onto a floured slab and kneed him a few times till he smiles back at you and thanks you for the massage. 

Flatten him and put him in a body bag. Set his doughy body in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or until he reaches rigamortis.  

Finally, the fun part. I have a confession to make. I was not prepared and did not have all of the spices that are normally in a pumpkin pie, so mine will not turn out like those pies from that banshee Marie and her cult of calendars. So this somewhat authentic pumpkin lover's supreme starts out with 3 jumbotron eggs. Then I mixed in two cans of this organic pumpkin puree garbage. I should have got the pumpkin pie mix, it would have been way easier. 

Then I added 2.5 tsp of cinnabun, 2 cups of malk, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, and a BADABING of salt. I whisked that all together and it looked really gross. 

After 30 mins of the fridge, the dough had finally come to terms and submitted to my all powerful backing magic. I placed it in a ceramic pie dish and spread it out to cover the bottom and the edges. 

I then poured the muddy orange juice into the pie dish and very elegantly maneuvered my masterpiece in to the oven with it set at 375.  

Do not be alarmed if your pie takes forever to back, they usually take a long time. I baked mine for about 40 minutes, then I opened it up and put foil around the edges of the crust so they wouldn't burn. Then after another 20 minutes or so, my spiced Mona Lisa was done baking. LET HER SIT FOR A LONG TIME! You do not want to eat warm baby food, so wait a while for your fall cake to solidify. Enjoy my version of this traditional fall squash cake!