Assorted sizes/types of flower & leaf cookie cutters
Custard cups
One 9-inch pie plate
Simple syrup (optional)
Ingredients
Grandma's Pie Crust
2cupsall purpose flour
1cup shortening
2tablespoonssugar
1/2teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoonbaking powder
1/2cupvery cold water
Any Fruit Pie Filling
5cupsfruit pie filling (1 recipe usually consists of about 5 cups of filling)
Instructions
Pie Crust Dough
In a large bowl, stir all of the dry ingredients together. Use a large serving fork or pastry cutter and cut in the shortening (or butter) until crumbly.
Add the cold water all at once and stir a few times, just until forms a ball (do not kneed or over mix).
Before you roll out dough for pie plate, use your pie plate to trace a circle onto parchment, invert it, and set aside.
Divide dough in half (this will be rather soft). Roll out one half on heavily floured counter top about 1 to 1-1/2 inches wider than pie plate. Roll up dough onto rolling pin and unroll onto pie plate. Cut off extra dough and set prepared bottom crust aside for filling.
Pie Crust Flowers
Add white gel food coloring to each cup for color (about 1 tablespoon). Add 2 teaspoons of water. Add color and mix for desired "darker" color. Now, poor a tiny bit of the darker color into a custard cup that has only the white food gel and water. Adjust colors with more color or white food coloring. Remember, the blue & purples bake darker.
Roll out about 1/3 of remaining dough on a heavily floured surface. Cut out the number of flowers/shapes, shape the leaves, etc., and place onto parchment lined baking sheets.
Use a food safe brush to paint on the colors for flowers and leaves. Place painted cutouts on baking sheet into refrigerator for about 15 minutes for ease of building pie top.
Assembly & Baking
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Place the parchment with the inverted circle drawn onto a baking sheet that will fit into your freezer.
Start with outer perimeter; adding the flowers & overlapping a little as you go. You will overlap a little of each layer of colors onto the next.
Once finished, place in freezer for 30 minutes and prepare pie filling if needed.
Brush the edge of the bottom pie crust the coordinating color of your outer ring. Add the pie filling. Carefully "slide" the frozen pie top onto pie plate.
Bake for 1 hour at 350 F.
If you want the baked pie top, carefully brush on simple sugar (if you brush too hard the colors will flake off as it is a very tasty, but flakey, pie crust). (Simple syrup is 1 part each water and granulated sugar, heat just until sugar is dissolved).