Pies
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What Lori Walsh remembers most about holiday gatherings as a little girl growing up in New Jersey, is stopping to pick up her grandmother in the family station wagon. More specifically, she remembers the way Grandma Walsh looked as she stepped out her front door, "always clutching her just-baked pie in a plastic container."

Once in the car, the lemony smell of baked apples and golden butter would break through the Tupperware's armor and fill every crevice of the wagon. Grandma Walsh's apple pie was "the highlight of every holiday meal," says Walsh, a mother of three who works part time as a therapist. "Everyone would gush over it."

When the pie plate had been scraped clean, Lori and her sister Cyndy would pepper Grandma Walsh with questions about her way with pie. But like generations of grandmothers before her, Ann Walsh was hard-pressed to come up with any answers.

It's not that she was protecting her recipe -- far from it. Grandma Walsh was part of the "pinch lady" brigade -- she used "a pinch" of this and "a pinch of that." The pinch ladies didn't really dissect or discuss their pie-baking techniques. They just rose early and rolled out a pie while the rest of the house slept. Pie baking was a solitary act, not out of any Zen desire to be "at one" with their rolling pins, but because it was more efficient that way.

Grandma Walsh did tell Lori once about her butter to shortening ratio. As for the rest, she did her best: "You have to try not to overwork the dough," she'd say, "or you'll end up with a crust that's too tough."

"How do you know when you've overworked it?" they'd ask.

"Well, you'll just feel it," she shrugged.

When the Walsh sisters got a little older they were determined to get to the bottom of this pie mystery. After school and before homework, they'd put on some music, pull out all of their mothers' American classic cookbooks and start baking pies. Lots and lots of pies.

"In those days we didn't have any after-school activities like kids do today so my sister and I would spend hours in the kitchen," says Walsh. "Our mother gave us carte blanche." Sadly, their grandmother never got to taste the result of their efforts.

After she passed and once the sisters started forming families of their own, they continued on their quest to make an apple pie as delicious as Grandma Walsh's, often comparing notes on the phone. Walsh thinks her current incarnation, the most "Grandma Walsh-worthy" yet. In fact, she's won the apple pie contest at her local farmers market so many times that, this year, the organizers have asked her to be a judge instead of a participant in order to give another baker a chance at the big prize.

Now that she's mastered the pie, she's written it down for posterity and she's teaching her children (Lyra, 12, Emmett, 8 and Oliver, 5) how to make it. She figures there will be plenty of other mysteries to solve.

We asked Walsh to share some pointers on bringing children into the pie-baking fold.
1
Demystify the pie.
Start baking pies around your children when they're rolling-pin size. Make pie often and where they can see you. If it looks effortless to you it will be effortless to them (and vice versa). Demystify pie baking so that it's not such an "event" come their turn.
2
Go straight to the source.
Take your kids to their local farmers market for inspiration. From June's bounty of plump strawberries and stalky rhubarb to summer's sweet blueberries to bins brimming with fall's crisp apples there is no shortage of filling "material." Involving them from the get go means more they'll be even more vested in the outcome.
3
Let go of your inner domestic goddess.
When you make pie with your kids, your kitchen will be a powdery mess and you will find flour in the oddest places for weeks to come. Whether you use a food processor or mix your dough by hand, you're going to want the kids to put their hands right in the bowl to experience that very tactile "feeling" Grandma Walsh described. It's going to be messy. "Deal with it," says Walsh.

Also, with so many little hands involved, "the dough will probably not turn out as perfect as you'd like," says Walsh. It is more important that your child develop a love for baking than turning out a blue-ribbon pie. "Besides," says Walsh, "it's hard to really mess up a homemade pie. How bad can it really be?"
4
Don't be in a hurry.
You can't rush a pie. That's part of its appeal. So wait for the opportune time when you've got a couple of free hours with your kids and there is no soccer practice or Daisy meeting to get to.
5
Don't cut corners.
The whole point of making a pie from scratch is to teach kids the meaning and benefits of homespun. Besides, there's not much joy in unwrapping a frozen crust or opening a can of filling. But there's lots to be had in stirring sugar into a bowl of mixed berries with a long wooden spoon.
6
Consider single servings.
When there's a big age spread among the children, it's easier to bake pies with each one individually. When that isn't possible, Walsh finds it easier for each of her children to bake an individual pie at the same time, so each can experience the entire process A to Z. And there's less sparring. When baking with more than one child, make sure everyone has (age-appropriate) assigned roles in advance. Who gets to paint the egg wash? Who gets to layer the apples? Who gets to deliver it the table when it's time for dessert.
7
Make delectable decorations.
When assembling the top crust, let the children use cookie cutters to piece a top together. It's a lot more fun to "create" a piece of "top" art. "We've had a lot of pies topped with ghosts and Easter bunnies," says Walsh. (Again, this is a bonding project, not a Martha project.)
8
Equip your kitchen.
Invest in hands-on tools like a cherry pitter or a hand-crank apple peeler. They're safer than knives and kids love to use them and see the skin spiral fall away.
9
Keep it simple.
Stick with apple pie for your first efforts, says Walsh. "Everybody loves apple pie. There's nothing scary or weird about it, and it tastes like family."
10
Deliver the goods.
If the pie is a "gift" for a new neighbor or someone recovering from surgery, for example, make sure the children make the delivery. "People are so grateful when you make them a pie," they says Walsh. It's important that the children see how much pleasure a gift of pie can bring and that they take some pride in that.
11
Brush up on their etiquette.
That's important because "once they've baked a pie from scratch," warns Walsh, "they can spot a store-bought crust a mile away."