apple pie

Well, I’m doing something I didn’t want to do… a food post! I just can’t help it! It’s so exciting to try something new and apple pie was unchartered territory. I make some killer mini pecan tarts with cream cheese crusts, chewy walnut raisin oatmeal cookies, a 4th generation 6 flavor pound cake, and snackable pecan cheddar cookies that get requested every Christmas. No apple pie… until today.

The bf said he wanted one and who am I to deny giving it a shot? We browsed through my favorite recipe site – Epicurious. (It’s all the recipies from Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines.) We settled on a good old fashioned apple pie. The recipe we used was for a mix of different types of apples but I like Golden Delicious so, off to the grocery store we went. I didn’t even have a pie pan and I don’t have a food processor so, I bought a pastry blender as well. Oh, and a makeshift rolling pin was fashioned out of a wine bottle.

The changes I made to the recipe: all Golden Delicious apples, added a 1/4 teasp. of cinnamon, didn’t use graham cracker crumbs in the bottom, did not glaze with milk or top with raw sugar. There’s enough butter in this pie to kill a horse but hey, it’s the weekend, and I’m allowing myself a small break from my diet.

Just a note - before you roll your dough out, pop it in the freezer for a bit after you’ve blended it and made two separate balls. Also, flour the hell out of your countertop. The butter warms up fast and makes it sticky and brittle so move quickly. I had to learn from my mistake, ball it all up and pop it in the freezer to start over 10 minutes later. Either way, I had to do quite a bit of patch work for the bottom and top crusts.

It was pretty labor intensive but it helped to get an organized strategy down.

Measure out and freeze your Crisco first. Cube your butter and measure out the rest of the crust ingredients and put them in a big bowl and place in the fridge until you’re shortening is frozen. Get your ice water ready.

Blend your crust mixture well until it’s fine and crumbly. Form two equal balls and place in the freezer.

Mix up your filling ingredients in another bowl. Peel and cut your apples and mix with the coating. Preheat your oven and let your apples sit for 15 minutes on your countertop while it’s warming up.

Roll out your first layer of crust (tons of flour on your countertop!) and line your pie pan and pop back in the fridge until that 15 minutes are up.

Dump your filling in the pie pan, dot with that 2T butter.

Roll out your top crust (more flour!), roll it onto your rolling pin and roll out on top of your huge mound of apples. Crimp the edges with a fork, decorate and pop it in the oven, following the rest of the baking instructions.

Tagged as: apple pie, baking, cooking, recipe, Thanksgiving