Apple Pie

I love making apple pie.. but I've always cheated on the crust. Why? Because every gosh darn recipe out there says to use a food processor to make your dough. I don't have one! Or a pastry cutter thingy! And shortening don't live here.. so any crust that is made with it is not eligible either. The prospect of making crust always seems doomed.

Alas, my former boss had a birthday last Friday and I signed up to make apple pie since she is not a cake person. A while back, she actually bought me the most neato thing ever for peeling and coring apples. Anyhoo.. since we had Thursday off, thank you Veterans, I decided it would be a good first go at making my own pie crust.

It seems simple enough.. mix some flour with butter and cold water. Don't be fooled, it is a science. You want to get the butter incorporated and have the whole thing look like crumbs while the butter is still cold. This means no touching and working very fast so the butter doesn't get warm and melt all over the flour. Still without a food processor or pastry cutter, I used this handheld half-moon shaped knife thing to cut the butter into the flour, chopping like a maniac for at least 5 minutes. It worked out really well! I didn't even have any trouble balling up my dough to refrigerate, which required touching. After about an hour of chilling, I was vury vury scurred to roll out the dough so I could mold it into my pie shell.. it was the moment of truth. But it rolled superbly! My recipe told me to roll it out on a lightly floured piece of parchent paper- I really think that made all the difference. The apple peeling, coring, and slicing was a breeze. While the pie shell continued to chill, I mixed the apples with sugar and spices and excitedly piled them into my shell. Then I covered the top with a second dough I had rolled out, pinched up the corners, cut steam holes, brushed on an egg wash, and baked my pie up. **I'm aware I look very cross-eyed in the picture on the left!

I had almost forgotten one of the major reasons I dislike making my own pie.. the dome issue. The top crust forms a dome from all the apples, and when the pie bakes, the apples bake down, but the crust stays domed. This equals an air pocket in the middle, and awkward cutting later. I googled this later, and learned a little trick, in which you cook the apples first then bake them in your pie.. apparently they don't shrink twice! I will try this next time.

Sadly, I never got a picture of the finished pie, only one of it going into the oven. It looked the same as below, only brown. The crust was delish.. but, the apples were too tart. I guess I didn't add enough sugar!

If you like pie, you might check out Wilfull's hilarious apple pie entry on her blog, Cooking on the Farm.