Procrastination Pays Off on Fried Apple Pies

I have a confession. After I posted about National Pie/Pi Day, I completely forgot about it. Here was a holiday that I could fix a pie, and I forgot! I was so sad and couldn’t believe I did. It wasn’t until the day was almost over or the next day that I had realized. So, I did what most procrastinators do best—I waited.

I had thought about making something for a co-worker’s birthday that was the week before. I didn’t know it was his birthday until it had past (he was working on location in Shelby County that week). Several days went by and I still didn’t make anything. The procrastinator in me was doing it again—waiting, I didn’t know what for, but I was waiting.

St. Patrick’s Day rolled around and I still didn’t do anything.

Then it dawned on me: Why not have all three celebrated at once? So, I waited again. lol. Since St. Patrick’s Day was on a Tuesday, I decided to wait until Friday to bring in my pies. But then I thought that wouldn’t work so well because Fridays are bagel/muffin days at work and I didn’t want to compete with that delicious treat. Thursday was just going to have to do, procrastination or not.

The next question was: What am I going to fix? I thought about making tiny apple pies in a tiny aluminum tin and I thought about fried pies. [drooling] I love fried pies…. So, that’s what I went with, apple, cherry FLAVORED cranberry, and apricot fried pies. Andrew’s reaction to my thinking about making fried pies also helped with that decision.


Let me explain why I made “flavored” all-caps. I went to the store to get dried apples, cherries, and one more fruit/berry. I wasn’t paying attention and only saw “cherry” on the bag, and did not see that it was an ocean-spray bag, which usually only sells cranberries…[face palm] I realized what I had done after I emptied the bag into the pot and actually read the print. lol. Needless to say, those cranberries got a TON of sugar to mellow out the tart flavor.




I invited a friend of ours over to taste test because he’s a huge fan of my fried pies. He loved the apple ones and almost would only eat that flavor, until that night. He ended up preferring the cherry flavored cranberries, which turned out to taste a lot like cherry. [sigh of relief]


I love to invite people over for taste testing. Except when the food turns out not as good as I thought it would, and then I feel really bad for having people eat it, even if they’re being polite.


With the exception of having to use toothpicks to identify which pie was which flavor, they turned out pretty good, and only two were left out of the 15 I brought to work for the 7 employees at work that day. This is including me. I had to have one. And, man, was it good, especially warmed up in the microwave. DELICIOUS! And, I made a cute little sign to go on top of the carrier, which said:

Happy Belated
Pie/Pi Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Birthday to CJ

Well, it was just a quick print out of that and how to tell which pies have what number of toothpicks in them on a grassy green piece of scrapbook paper. I liked it though.

Oh, I didn’t mention this. Andrew and I bought a brand new fryer to use for these pies. I hope we didn’t waste 80 bucks on something we’re not going to use that often. You, know since fried food is really kind of bad for you. I think you can steam vegetables in it, too. We’ve got to figure it all out. It’s nice though, since I’m used to old Fry Daddy bucket fryers. Those are dangerous. I would be very cautious and somewhat scared I was going to dump the grease all over me. But, this new one is a sturdy box of a fryer with cool-touch handles and a digital thermostat. This was obviously an Alton Brown inspired purchase on Andrew’s part. Oh! And there’s no plastic lid that you can melt. And, yes, I’m speaking from experience. Lol.



At this point, I think I need to start thinking of a catchy ending phrase. You know, like “You stay classy, San Diego. I'm Ron Burgundy?” Wow, that was a pretty random thought. lol.