Apple Jelly Pie

Author: Margaret Helmstetter

It all started with a single phone call. My mother-in-law, called to remind us that the family reunion would take place at Great Grandpa's place in just a few short days. And oh yeah, we were expected to bring a dessert.

Grant, my husband, looked at me and said, "We’re broke. And there is just enough food in the house until payday." I knew he was right, but I was positive that if we just put our heads together we could come up with something that wouldn’t leave us short.

My thoughts danced around exotic cakes, cookies, custards and pies, but I soon discovered we didn't have half the ingredients needed to complete any of the recipes on my mind. We just had a baby and I was on maternity leave. We carefully budgeted for this time but we didn’t budget or plan for a family reunion.

Grant started counting the pennies in our “emergency” fund while I went for the cookbooks. I eyed the almost empty flour canister and thought, “Cookies and cakes are out of the question.”

I needed a dessert that would feed at least ten people and custards were out of the questions since I only had two eggs left and I needed those for dinner. A gelatin dessert was out after a brief foray into the pantry revealed a single four-serving box of grape flavored gelatin.

Grant hollered from the other room, “We have $1.39 in the penny jar!”

Things were not looking good. “I wonder if I could get out of the family reunion by claiming exhaustion,” I thought. After all, I’d just had a baby. “No, that wouldn't work,” I concluded. After all, they’d just show up at our house and I really didn't want them to know just how tight our budget was. (At least not back then.)

“Two more weeks and I would be back at work. Money would not be a problem then. Why couldn’t the reunion be a few more weeks away,” I thought. Oh well, I needed to find something to bring and things were looking hopeless.

After looking through the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, I concluded dessert would have to be made from fruit. The only problem was the fact that my mother-in-law always made the fruit salad—it was tradition.

Sitting down with the cookbooks, I began looking at the various fruit desserts. There had to be one in there I could make with what we had in the house and Grant really wanted a pie— more specifically apple pie—they were one of his favorite treats.

“Could I make an apple pie?” I wondered. I didn’t have enough flour for a regular crust, but I did have enough graham crackers to make a graham cracker crust. And apples weren’t a problem; we had received several fruit baskets when the baby was born!

“We’re on to something!”

I had the crust and I had the apples, but what about the sugar and the crust top? “Can we use apple jelly to sweeten the apples?” asked Grant.

“What a brilliant idea! If I melted the apple jelly and coated the apples with the jelly, it would work in the place of sugar.” I exclaimed as I hugged Grant.

The top crust was still a predicament, but not for long. I had made pies with a streusel topping in the past, I could do it for the apple pie and I had just enough flour to do it. And if I used molasses with the white sugar, we’d have just enough brown sugar to complete the streusel recipe.

Out of necessity, Apple Jelly Pie was born and so was a frequently requested family dessert.

Apple Jelly Pie Recipe

Crust Ingredients

1 C graham cracker crumbs
3 Tb melted margarine

Crust Instructions

Combine ingredients and press into a 9-inch pie plate that has been lined with foil.
Chill.

Filling Ingredietns

3 Lb. peeled, cored, sliced tart apples
2 Tb lemon juice
1 C apple jelly

Filling Instructions

Toss apples with lemon juice and set aside in large bowl.
Heat apple jelly in pan until it is liquid. Do not boil.
Pour liquid over apple slices and toss to coat evenly.
Pour apple slices in prepared crust and return to refrigerator for a minimum of two hours.

Topping Ingredients

2/3C sugar
1 Tb molasses
1 C flour
1 Tsp cinnamon
1 Tsp nutmeg
2/3 C margarine chilled and cut into small pieces

Topping Instructions

Using a fork, combine sugar and molasses until well mixed.
Sift flour, cinnamon and nutmeg together, then combine with sugar molasses mixture using a fork.
When mixed well cut in margarine until it resembles small peas.
Sprinkle topping over chilled pie.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until topping browns.

This pie is delicious warm or cold. To serve, use foil to remove entire pie from pie plate, cut into wedges and serve with a scoop of ice cream if desired.

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