Apple Love and My Favorite Apple Pie Recipe

With apple season just around the corner, let’s talk about apples and my favorite apple pie recipe. After being raised on a wide variety of Connecticut apples, it’s hard not to be an apple snob. But we do have a few varietals that grow well here in Arizona, depending on the USDA Hardiness Zone. At Bella Terra, we grow Anna apples that I harvest in June, which seems completely counter-intuitive to me. I try to cold store them in the refrigerator, but unless I use them quickly, they tend to shrivel and get soft.

At our cabin in the White Mountains, we have a Winter Banana apple tree which is ready for picking in October. Our tree produces fruit approximately every other year. These apples are good for eating and making applesauce, but are not the best apple for making pies, because they are soft and sweet.

Types of Apples for Baking

For the best pies, crisps, and other baked treats, apples need to be firm enough to hold their own during the cooking process. These apples are called “baking apples” and they include Braeburn, Cortland, Honey Gold, Jonathan, Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith, and Newtown Pippin.

A Favorite Apple Pie Memory

When my daughter, Elisabeth was in 4th grade, I was her Girl Scout troop leader. I thought it would be a great idea to teach 36 nine-year olds how to make a pie from scratch during February’s Great American Pie month.

Our meetings were 1.5 hours long, not long enough to bake a pie, but long enough to understand a recipe and assemble the ingredients. I envisioned each girl bringing home a freshly made 9″ pie to bake at home. What the heck was I thinking? First of all, trying to get 36 nine-year old girls to pay attention was a feat in itself. But with rolling pins, sugar and flour?

One hundred pounds of apples, 50 lbs of flour, and 15 lbs of sugar later….well, you get the picture. Fortunately, I “pre-made” most of the dough and “pre-cut” most of the apples. We broke into 6 teams of 6 girls, with lots of parent helpers. Each girl left the meeting, covered in flour but with a full size pie to take home and bake. As you can imagine, it was a bit of an exhausting experience, but hopefully a meeting they will remember.

An Affordable tool for peeling lots of apples

I wouldn’t have survived cutting all those apples without one of these:

***Old fashioned Apple Peeler and Corer***

It’s a heavy duty, durable apple peeler and corer that I highly recommend. I don’t know what genius invented it but I marvel every time I use it. You can find one on Amazon for under $20.00 here. This gadget seems to get a great deal of use at our house, especially in the fall when I need to peel larger quantities of apples (can be used for potatoes, too.)

Just by manually turning the handle, this device peels, cores and slices the apples.

The base has a suction cup to stabilize the peeler on your work surface. I have used this for apples in all sizes and it works brilliantly!

Homemade Crust or Store Bought?

After making and tasting several pie dough recipes, I select one from King Arthur Baking for my Girl Scout troop pie making extravaganza. Making a pie crust from scratch is super easy. Using a food processor to combine ingredients is a terrific shortcut vs mixing by hand.

Just add all the ingredients and pulse away, adding more ice water as you go to get the proper consistency of dough.

The key to making this dough so flaky is the combination of both vegetable shortening and butter. Leaving large chunks of it in the dough makes for pockets of flakiness.

If you are unable or unwilling to make your own pie crust dough, you cannot go wrong with Trader Joe’s pie crust as a substitute. Each packet contains 2 crusts and it’s slightly sweet flavor and flakiness is a winner.. You just have to plan ahead to defrost it properly or it’s difficult to lay open.

Tried and True Apple Pie Recipe

Often I will whip up a pie without a recipe. I squeeze fresh lemon juice over the sliced apples to prevent browning and then coat the apples with a mixture of flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of salt. However, it’s a bit of a crap shoot. Depending on the water content of the apple, the final result might be a too juicy or dry pie. A juicy, wet pie can make the bottom crust soggy.

After experimenting with various apple pie recipes, I have had the most luck with Serious Eats Perfect Apple Pie recipe. You par-cook the apples before adding them to the crust and so far, every time I make this recipe my pie (and apples) cook perfectly.

Pretty decorative Pie Crusts

There is a plethora of pictures on Pinterest showing beautifully decorated pie crusts. When I have time and I’m not rushing to throw a pie together, it is fun to play with designs.

Happy Baking

You cannot beat the smell of an apple pie baking~~seems so appropriate for this time of year. I hope this inspires you to bake a pie from scratch!

It is always important to cool your fruit pie before cutting into it. However, it is VERY tempting to dive into it right away, as the freshly baked apple pie aroma is intoxicating.

Do you have a favorite apple recipe? Take advantage of the fall apple season and enjoy your pie baking!

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