"As American as Apple Pie"

Hey Y'all!

I wanted to share with my blog readers an exciting thing that happened on July 4th! I live close to a small town that I absolutely love - it is like the quintessential small town of America - and this town hosts a big 4th of July event each year. One of the  main highlights of this event is their "All-American Apple Pie Competition". I actually heard about this competition for the first time this year and decided to enter the competition what with my obsession with love of pies and all. Soooo, I thought long and hard about how to make this pie really stand out as well as how to give it a patriotic spin. I was talking about it with my husband/cooking adviser and he suggested I paint the pie crust (with food coloring of course). My initial reaction was, "No way! Who paints pie crust??". But, the idea kept nagging at me so much that finally I decided to Google it and see if anything came up. Whaddya know?! People actually do paint their pie crusts sometimes - even Martha Stewart!*laughs* I decided if I really wanted to make my pie stand out, this would be the way to go. Small town pie bakers tend to be good at this sort of thing (at least in my mind, anyway) so I didn't want to compete on taste alone. 

The night before the competition I made the pie and ever so carefully painted the pie crust. I anxiously placed it in the oven, checking every 5 minutes to make sure the food coloring didn't start to burn before the pie was baked all the way. It turned out beautiful - I was pretty pleased with the result! :) And apparently the judges were too because the next day my pie won the "Most Patriotic" category of the competition! It was a great 4th! :)

Before: 

After:

Success!