Stories from the Heartland: FAMILY SECRET

By JOHN FRIEDLEIN

Neal Cardin

Three generations including Daisy Knight, 101, work to pass on Knight's recipe for making fried apple pies. Knight checks the readiness of the apples as granddaughter Dianne Alvey, great-granddaughter Dana Sego, and grandduaghter Melissa Hartmann watch.

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Neal Cardin

Dianne Alvey turns a fried apple pie as she learns her grandmother's recipe for the dessert.

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Neal Cardin

Daisy Knight, 101, passes her recipe for fried apple pies onto her granddaughters and great-granddaughters.

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FLINT HILL — Used to be, you could breeze past a McDonald’s window for a fried apple pie.

No more. The fast-food chain has been baking them for 16 years.

Daisy Knight, however, helped save the flaky dessert from extinction last week when the 101-year-old taught two generations of her relatives how to make them.

“We wanted her to pass that family tradition down to us,” granddaughter Melissa Hartmann said.

Knight’s pie-making skill is well-known. Way back when, her 10 children would jostle for position in line to make sure they got one. And fans would drive from as far away as Hodgenville when they were served at a biennial yard sale.

Knight charged $2. After working for the better part of two hours on their first batch, one of her students decided the price should have been higher.

“Have you ever heard the term, labor-intensive? That’s what this is,” Hartmann said.

Perhaps not to Knight, who, using a washboard, at one time scrubbed laundry for a dozen family members.

Knight on Wednesday calmly offered suggestions during the pie lesson in granddaughter Dianne Alvey’s kitchen, which is appointed with a country craft décor and overlooks her cattle and tobacco farm.

Roll the dough out thinner than a biscuit — and one crust at a time, Knight told blue-ribbon biscuit maker Alvey.

How about five pounds of sugar to cut the Granny Smiths’ tartness? Too much. How much then? “Make it to suit you.”

This isn’t an exact science.

Knight, a resident of Elizabethtown’s MorningView Gardens assisted living center, tested the consistency of the filling with a paring knife. Chunky applesauce was the goal.

After the apples were properly mashed and the crusts stuffed with filling, talk quieted a bit. The smell of fried dough filled the kitchen.

This was the hard part. Filling seeped through the top of the first pie.

“I know it’s not like yours, Mamaw,” Alvey said.

Knight’s are “picture perfect,” great-granddaughter Dana Sego said.

One of the students mentioned McDonald’s as a fallback, albeit a dated one.

Knight’s son, J.T., ate the first one in a bowl. (Less crumbly fried pies can be eaten with the hands.) He deemed it “pretty good,” but it could stand more filling. A cook threatened to hit him with a dough ball.

“We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re learning,” Alvey said.

The omelet-sized fritters, though, improved with practice.

Now for the real test.

They handed one to Daisy Knight.

“That is pretty good,” she said.

John Friedlein can be reached at (270) 505-1746 or jfriedlein@ thenewsenterprise.com. His Stories from the Heartland column appears on Mondays.

  John Friedlein can be reached at (270) 505-1746 or jfriedlein@ thenewsenterprise.com. His Stories from the Heartland column appears on Mondays. 

Daisy Knight’s fried apple pie recipe

Submitted by granddaughter Melissa Hartman   10 large cooking apples ½  to 1 cup sugar 2-3 tablespoons cinnamon Biscuit dough Crisco (for frying pies)   Peel and thinly slice apples into a large kettle or pan. Add 1 cup of water, more or less, and cook on stovetop until apples are soft. Use a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon to get the apples to resemble chunky applesauce. Add ½ cup sugar at a time until apples are sweet enough. Also, add 2-3 tablespoons of cinnamon at this time. Using your favorite recipe for biscuits, thinly roll out the dough into an oval. Put a large spoonful of the cooked apples on half of the dough. Fold the other half of the dough, crimping the edges to form a tight seal. (It should look somewhat like a half moon.) Heat some Crisco in a skillet on medium heat. Gently place the pies into the pan. Fry on both sides, making sure each side is brown but not burned. Depending on size, this should make 8-10 pies. Practice makes perfect on these, so if they don't look "picture perfect" the first time, keep practicing. The results will be worth the effort.