Grandma Jordan’s Pie Crust / Pie Crust Cookies

I've been making pies with this crust recipe since I was a little girl. Now mind you, I didn't know what I was doing back then. I was just spending time with Grandma making a mess with an edible version of play-dough. She would take a big chunk, roll it out flat, wrap it around her rolling pin and ever so softly, lay it over a round glass dish. After cutting away the parts that flopped over the edge, she would fill it with all different types of fruit coated in sugar and sometimes cinnamon too. There was the one time she used this pink celery that I ate before it was baked and it tasted so bad that I refused to eat a piece of her pie for the first time ever. Of course later in life I learned that, pink celery, was rhubarb and it is a wonderful pie filling.

This pie crust is nice and flaky and though I have her original recipe here that calls for shortening you can substitute it with butter, one for one, the key though is making sure that the butter stays cold! There are also no instructions on how to bake the pies as that depends on the pie that you are making. This yields enough dough for two double crust 9 inch pies. If you don't need that much I suggest freezing the leftover or making, Spice Top Cookies as my Grandmother called them, since she used the lids of her spice containers to make the cut outs.

Grandma Jordan’s Pie Crust

4 cups AP Flour

1 tablespoon Sugar

1 teaspoon Salt

1 3/4 cup Cold Shortening or Unsalted Butter

1 tablespoon White Vinegar

1 Large Egg

1/2 cup Cold Water

> In a large bowl whisk together Flour, Sugar and Salt

> Cut the Butter down into 1/4 inch thick slices, if they start to get warm and melt stick the pieces back in the fridge. It is very important that all of the ingredients stay cold.

> In a food processor add in half your Flour mix and Butter, pulse until it starts to break apart leaving some pea sized balls of butte but do not let it come together. Remove and repeat with the other half.

> Beat the Egg and add it to the Flour mix, followed by the Vinegar and the Cold Water. Mix with a spoon until it all comes together and forms a dough ball.

> Divide the ball into 4 balls, flatten and wrap them with parchment or plastic wrap, leave in the fridge for 1 hour before use.

Pie Dough Cookies (aka Spice Top Cookies)

Pie Dough (use scraps from pie making or straight pie dough)

Jelly, Jam, Leftover Pie Filling, Apple Butter...

Cinnamon (I used my Breakfast Blend instead of Cinnamon & Sugar)

Sugar

Milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Tools: rolling pin, two round cutters (one should be at least 1/2 inch smaller than the bigger one), sheet try, parchment paper

> If using pie dough scraps make sure to collect them all, form into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes

> Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick, cut out an even number of larger circles, then use the smaller cutter to make a hole in the middle of half your larger circles. Don’t through away the little cut outs, they make nice little snacking cookies. If using the pie scraps, you can also re-ball the scraps one more time to get more cookies but if you try a third time you may loose the flake of the dough from over working it.

> Using your fingertip or small pastry brush, wet the outside rim of the whole circle with milk, then place the cutout on top, press lightly

> Fill the center with jam, jelly, apple butter or leftover pie filling, this is really up to you

> Coat the top rim with milk, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar

> Bake them for 15-20 until golden brown