My dad grew up in a very small farm town in the middle of Kansas. My grandparents had lived there their whole lives, my grandfather ran his family’s farm and then owned the local Auto Body Shop and my grandmother worked at the bank. My grandmother was an amazing cook. My dad and his dad would wake up early to go hunting/fishing before school for their dinner that night and my dad tells stories about all the delicious food my grandmother would make. My grandfather died 6 months before I was born but my grandmother lived to be 88 years old and was such an amazing woman. We called her Gogo. I have so many memories of visiting her in Kansas, waking up at 5am to make homemade cinnamon rolls, all sorts of pies for Thanksgiving, homemade biscuits and the savory smells of her chex mix in the oven. She used to have a typewriter where she should type out her recipes on little recipe cards with a thing of white out close by in case she made a mistake. Those sweet little memories are moments I savor, watching her work and seeing the joy it gave her to make food for her family. I like to think her love for cooking and creating and filling our bellies was passed on to me.

When my parents got married, my Gogo gave my mom a cookbook of her recipes and it’s such a cherished item. One of her many recipes that I remember growing up was her sour cream + apple pie. She made it every Thanksgiving (with a cherry and pumpkin pie, too!) and always would comment “this is Robbie’s favorite (my dad).”

Gogo’s Sour Cream and Apple Pie

Ingredients:

for pie
2 cups tart apples, sliced
3/4 cups sugar
1 cup sour cream
1 egg
2 tbsp flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
sprinkle of salt

for topping
1/3 cups sugar
1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 450F. Put apples in the prepared pie shell (unbaked). Mix sour cream with the egg and dry ingredients, pour over the apples. Bake for 15 minutes.

While pie is baking, mix together the topping ingredients. Remove pie from oven, drop oven temperature down to 325F and sprinkle mixture over top of pie. Bake an additional 20 minutes.

This is the most delicious, creamy apple pie! She would always pair with homemade french vanilla or cinnamon ice cream on Thanksgiving. My sweet Gogo. I miss her.