VeganMoFo: What to do with a plethora of apples

Back home at my parents' house, we have an apple tree in the backyard.  It is a cute little thing, which grows rather crooked since my dad didn't stake it up properly when it was little. Regardless, we have been getting a lot of fruit this year after smaller harvests for the past two years. (With apples failing to grow due to buds falling off or early freezes.)  So much fruit, in fact, that my parents gave me a bucket full of apples three weeks ago. Yes, it was literally a bucket.  I had so many, that I was worried about them going bad in case I could not eat them fast enough (even though they are residing in the pantry closet, which is both cool and dark).

My solution: bake the gingerbread apple pie from Vegan with a Vengeance.  I had had my eye on that recipe for a while, and using up apples and going to a potluck was the perfect excuse to use it.  As you can see by the picture, I was a bit lazy and didn't bother to peel my apples. I don't really think that it made much difference in the final product. I would recommend reading the directions though, because I definately was all ready to roll out the dough for the crust, and then I realized that you crumble it on instead. Whoops.

I also ended up having more filling than would fit into my pie pan.  As you can see, I improvised and put it in a few cupcake liners in a muffin pan. I even saved up some of the crust so that I could sprinkle it on top of these so-called mini pies as well.

I took this pie to a potluck as soon as it came out of the oven, and it was an amazing success.  Everyone loved it, and I didn't bring a single piece back with me. (I guess it was a good thing that I had extra filling for the min pies then.) Everyone was complimenting me on it and asking for the recipe.  The taste was even better after I let it sit since I felt as if the spices weren't as strong right when it was still really warm.  It definitely feels like a quintessentially fall recipe, and I would strongly encourage using it when you need to impress people.  I can't even begin to imagine the amazingness if I were to have it with a scoop of soy ice cream.

Coming Soon: I will be making another very fall-esque dish tomorrow- VwaV's Black Soybean, beet and barley soup with beets fresh from Saturday's Farmers' market!