Homemade Apple Pie
Apple pie is wondrously more delicious in the fall and at holiday time. Here is a simple recipe with a few tips and tricks to make your guests want another slice of that apple pie goodness!
Choosing the Right Apple for the Pie Filling
Here are a few tips for choosing your apple-pie apples. Texture is everything!
- Avoid apples that tend to be mushy: red delicious, yellow apples, envy variety, and any others you might’ve happened upon and found to not be ‘crisp’. Mushy apples may be great for applesauce, apple cider vinegar, or other things… but they are not the best for pies.
- Stick with a firm apple you can trust, even if it’s a sour, tart, or tangy apple. You can always adjust the flavor and sweetness of your apple pie, but you can’t change the texture. Granny smith apples have never failed me!
- You can use a single variety or mix up the apples.
More Pie Making Tips
I like to dice my apples to little ½-inch cubes with a hand chopper. The dicing helps the apples to soak up the flavors of the spices and sugar, especially if you are using a sour apple like granny smith.
Coat the apples thoroughly with the ingredients. This helps the pie to bake and set up evenly.
Fill up the insides of the pie so that it’s a heaping mound on top or just to the height of the pie shell. I like to pile the apple bits high on top because they will bake down a little bit.
Don’t skip the cut-up butter inside of the pie just under the top crust. It adds to the flaky underside of the crust and aids in the thickening and setting up the center of the pie.
Do have fun with the flavors! Feel free to add and adjust spices to your taste preferences.
If you’re baking for nut lovers, feel free to add anywhere from ½ to 1 cup of chopped pecans in the pie.
For the top crust, you can get fancy and do lattice strips of crusts across the top, but it’s not necessary. If you use a solid top crust, just be sure to crimp the top and bottom crusts together well and also to cut several 2-inch length vent holes in the middle of the top crust.
How Long Does an Apple Pie Last?
Your delicious homemade apple pie may be gone in a flash. However, if you have some left over, it doesn’t have to take up fridge space! The pie can last on the counter up to 3 days. If you keep it refrigerated, it should last for 5 days.
Apple pie for breakfast, anyone?
Homemade Apple Pie
Ingredients
- 2 uncooked pie shells for a bottom and top crust
- 6-7 apples peeled cored, and diced in ½ in. cubes
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ½ cup white sugar
- 1 stick unsalted butter
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp cinnamon and any other spices you might prefer nutmeg, anise, cloves…
- 1 Tbs of flour or 1 tsp of starch
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Peel your apples and core them, saving peel and core if you’re planning on making apple cider vinegar.
- Chop your apples into small chunks (1/2 inch size) – the small size helps soak up all of those amazing flavors.
- Combine your sugars, salt, cinnamon, any additional spices, and flour.
- Cover the chopped apples with the sugar-spice-flour combination until all pieces are covered.
- Place coated apple bits in uncooked pie shell.
- Cut the stick of butter into small slivers and place them all over the top of the apple mixture in the shell.
- Cover the pie with a top crust. Be sure to crimp all along the edge of the pie to get a nice seal.
- As with any pie with a top crust, be sure to cut three to four 2-inch length vent holes in the middle of the top crust, so that the pie can ventilate and not leak out over the sides.
- Optionally, do a light egg wash on top to allow for pretty browning.
- Bake for 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow juices to rest and disperse evenly for about 15 to 20 minutes before cutting.
my favorite recipe for pie. thank you
That makes my day!!