Football Food Sunday, Take 5!

I can't believe we're closing in on the final day of MoFo and that this is the last Football Food Sunday of the month. It's not the end of the football season though so I'm sure there wil be more ridiculous Sunday food posts ahead of us!

After last nights halloween party I knew I wanted to take it easy today but I also wanted my final Football Food Sunday to be special...quite the dilemma! I eventually decided to make Chilli Cheese Dogs and Apple Pie, fun, but kinda low maintenance.

The motivation behind the chilli cheese dogs was that my lovely friend Kip from the blog Messy Vegetarian Cook made chilli for last nights party so I knew I could use some of the leftovers for these! I cheated a little more by buying the hot dogs (Frys) and the cheese (Vegusto) but I made the bread rolls myself; mainly because that actually seemed easier than going to the supermarket!

The buns are the Plain White Buns from The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet, I made these a few weeks ago on Football Food Sunday & it was no hassle to shape them differently to make hot dog buns. These do rise a lot though so I had to do a bit of careful reshaping to get them right. Next time I would shape them into 10 hot dog rolls instead of the 8 baps they usually make. These chilli cheese dogs were totally amazing, I can't believe what a difference baking your own bread makes! I've also never topped a hot dog with anything other than ketchup before and the addition of chilli and cheese made them so much more delicious.

Whilst the dough for the bread was rising I started on my first ever totally from scratch pie. I've made mince pies before but only using store bought pastry and I've made store-bought puff pastry topped faux chicken pies but never pie crust from scratch! As I mentioned the other day my copy of Vegan Pie In The Sky arrived so I was excited to get started on some pie making. The Cosmos Apple Pie was the obvious choice, it's classically American and Isa even says in the preamble for the recipe that it's probably the first pie recipe you'll want to master. I decided to make the Buttery Double Crust for my pie because it sounded delicious and can I just say, wow, the pastry came out so perfectly and it was really delicious.

The pastry for the top of the pie fell apart a little as I put it on, mainly because it didn't look perfect so I tried to backtrack & take it off making the whole thing worse. Pie hint, do not try to remove your top crust to re-roll it, it will have touched the filling by then so there's no going back! After a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar I doubt anyone could even tell! As well as having never made a pie before I've actually never even eaten a homemade fruit pie before! This was delicious and clearly much better than the pies I used to buy from the supermarket before going vegan, I was also really surprised at how simple the process was even for a total rookie! I'm so excited by Vegan Pie In The Sky, I can't wait to make the Cherry Pie, the Key Lime Pie, the Chocolate Raspberry Tart, the Berry Chocolate Chip Cobbler, the Lemon Mousse Pie, the...you get the idea! I could go on forever, I will definitely be posting more pie pictures on this blog!

This has been a very successful days eating, I see many more pies and chilli dogs in my future! What are your favourite pies or hot dog toppings?