I pulled out the last morsel of the last pie today. That last one, an experiment with mock pecan pie (because several in the family cannot eat tree nuts) did not go brilliantly, but it (actually "they," as they were two small pies, one with GF crust) was good enough. I probably won't repeat it. The new/old Marlborough Pie recipe - an apple-custard-lemon treat that I mentioned last year- will become a yearly standard, I think. After having found in 2020 that cutting the mince pie with pumpkin last year did not work well despite similar spices, I used the commercial mince as a 1/4 additive to an apple pie from an old cookbook. That was also excellent.
I had ratcheted back from my over-adventurous five pies last year to those three, and I may drop down to 2.5 next year, repeating the Marlborough and Apple-Mince. The 6.5" pie will be an experiment, likely. I used the crust leftovers to do some of the remaining mince as small tarts in muffin tins. The smaller dose of pure mince seemed to attract more takers. For those needing to make GF crust - most commercial ones are terrible and most recipes are as well - the King Arthur flour mix is good. With gluten free in general, either the flavor is right or the texture is right, seldom both.
I noticed that Marlborough Pie is an Old Sturbridge Village recipe. I visited OSV many a time from childhood on. In childhood days I baked cookies using Old Sturbridge Village recipes. I believe that it would be accurate to say that my first attempts at cooking came from those OSV cookie recipes. Follow the recipes for baked goods if you want them to turn out well. For skillet-based recipes, I followed my father's example and improvised, with varying degrees of success.
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