I have a lot of things to share from the month that I’ve been away from the blog, so I guess I’ll try to break it all up into different posts.

I’ll start with the baked goods I gorged myself on while at my moms house.

First up: gingerbread men.  Because it’s Christmas, which means you eat gingerbread men.  Nuff said?

As usual, I did a pretty lousy job decorating them:
Note the angry one in the middle, and the deformed fella on the bottom.

I made a Syracuse Orange man (heh. heh.) but he turned out pretty dopey looking.

Next, we have my favorite food in the world: Mom’s Apple Pie.  It’s really something special, and I beg my mom to make it every time I go home.

She made me one while I was there, and I watched her like a hawk to figure out how she makes it so good.  I made one myself while I was there, but it wasn’t as good as hers.  Ah well, the food someone makes for you always tastes better than the food you make for yourself.  Here’s my photo diary of the pie making process.  Note: my mom uses store bought pie dough.  It rocks.  And it’s easy.  Don’t hate.

The magic recipe.  It’s really nothing fancy, but it’s amazing in its simplicity.
The dough.The apples.

Fill ‘er up!

Action shot!

Make sure you put the excess flour + sugar + cinn from the bottom of the bowl on top.

Dot with butter.  I’ve always thought it was funny that placing pieces of butter on top of something it called “dotting” it.

Voila!  (Pronounced phonetically, of course.  Who speaks french anyway?)

So good even the dog wants a nibble.

I’m going to post the pie recipe on the recipe section of the site.  I’ll throw up a link in Part 2, where I will share a recipe for savory bread pudding and homemade peppermint patties and almond joy/mounds bars!  Part 3 will be a recap of the fabulous meal that I had at Wolfgang Puck Cafe in Downtown Disney. So much yum coming up!