A New Apple Pie.—Peel and core about eight or ten apples or as many as are wanted. Make a rich pastry dough and cut in strips about two inches wide. Wind a strip around each apple, but do not cover it. Fill the center of each apple with butter, sugar and water. Sprinkle with nutmeg, put in bag, then in the oven and bake. Serve with or without cream.
Deep Apple Pie With Cream Cheese.—Bake a nice apple pie about three-quarters of an hour before dinner. Have a small cream cheese pressed through a ricer and mixed with a cup of whipped cream and a little salt. Press through a pastry tube or tin funnel on top of the pie in a pattern, and serve warm for dessert. The cheese and cream combination may also be used on a two crust apple pie.
Cranberry Pie.—Line a rather deep pie plate with a plain crust. Put on a border of richer paste, fill with cranberries cooked according to directions for stewed cranberries, and put strips of crust over the top, making squares or diamonds as preferred. Put in bag and bake.
Cranberry and Raisin Pie.—Allow to each pie a cup and a half cranberries and a half cup of raisins. The latter should be seeded and the berries washed and cut in two. Mix with them a cup of sugar, a tablespoon of flour, and a teaspoonful of butter. Fill a pie plate lined with crust, heaping up slightly in the middle. Cover with an upper crust, bag, and bake in a hot oven.
Lemon Pie.—Beat the yolks of three eggs lightly, add one cup of sugar slowly and then the juice and grated yellow rind of one lemon. Beat hard and stir in two even tablespoons of flour made smooth in one cup of milk. Turn into a paste lined plate and bake about half an hour in a paper bag. Cool partly and cover with the whites of three eggs beaten stiff with six even tablespoons of powdered sugar. Pile roughly and set in a very cool oven to become firm.
Mince Pie.—A simple rule for making mince meat by measure, calls for a pint bowl of well cooked beef chopped to the finest mince and measured after chopping, two bowls of tart apples chopped into coarse bits and a half bowl chopped suet. Add to this a pound of seeded raisins, also chopped, a pound of currants, a quarter of a pound of citron cut in thin slices, a tablespoonful each of powdered cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Use enough sweet cider to make moist, then add a bowl of sugar and an even teaspoonful salt. Scald well and put away in a stone jar. When you make the pies add a few whole raisins, chopped nut meats or any jelly you have on hand.
When mince pie is to be reheated for dinner and served hot, grated cheese may be sprinkled over the top just before setting it in the oven to heat.
Mock Mince Pie.—To four quarts green tomatoes, chopped fine, allow three pounds brown sugar, the juice of two lemons and their yellow rind, grated, a tablespoonful each cinnamon, allspice and salt, half a teaspoonful cloves and a tablespoonful of grated nutmeg. Put into a porcelain lined kettle and simmer gently until reduced one half in bulk. Now add two pounds and one-half seeded raisins, or part raisins and part currants or chopped prunes and a cup of boiled cider. Then cook an hour or two longer until thick. Bake as any mince pie.
Pecan Pie With One Crust.—One cup of sugar, three eggs, one cup of sweet cream, one cup of pecans well mashed. Beat very light, pour into two pie pans that are lined with good rich paste, put in bag and bake.
Real Old Fashioned Pumpkin Pie.—If you are fortunate enough to get a genuine old fashioned field pumpkin, you may be thankful. If forbidden that privilege, the canned pumpkin or the dried pumpkin flour, or again a Hubbard squash or a big yellow one, may be so manipulated as to deceive even a connoisseur on pumpkin pies, into thinking he has the very kind that "Mother used to make," and giving thanks accordingly. If the field pumpkin is yours, wash, cut up without peeling, scrape out all the wooly fiber, then put over the fire on the back of the stove. Add just a little water to keep it from sticking on the bottom, cover closely and steam gently for six or eight hours. At the end of this time the pumpkin pulp should be thoroughly cooked in its own juices. Take up, cool a little, then pull off the skin with a sharp knife. Press through a sieve and let it stand overnight in a press so as to remove the superfluous liquid, which should be saved to use in making Boston brown bread. When ready to bake, measure the pulp and to every five cupfuls allow one teaspoonful of salt, half a grated nutmeg, a tablespoonful of mace, two teaspoonfuls of ginger and a large cupful of sugar. Beat four eggs and stir into the pumpkin pulp, together with four cupfuls of sweet milk and a half cupful cream. Beat well and taste to see if it is sweet enough. Turn into plates lined with good pastry, bag, and bake three-quarters of an hour until a golden brown and firm in the center. Serve with good American cheese. Some old-fashioned cooks like their pumpkin pies flavored with a little rose water.