I baked an apple pie. From scratch. Well, mostly from scratch.
Here's how it went down. Eric (my boy) and I decided to go apple-picking at this place about forty five minutes away from where we live. It was just a tiny little apple farm that, interestingly, also had alpacas. When we arrived, the nice lady who greeted us handed us a large bucket and a plastic bag and lead us to a golf cart, apparently a necessary mode of transportation to travel the 300 feet into the orchard. The apples left were relatively small, so we just picked a bunch of them. And ended up with nine pounds of apples. Nine. Here's what that looks like, after we took out about eight or nine for the pie:
What to do with the rest of them, I still haven't figured out. But I'd be damned if we weren't going to make an apple pie. A quick Google search lead me to this page, a five-star apple pie recipe with 1,061 reviews and 23,197 people who had saved it. Sounded like a pretty good deal, so I decided to give it a try.
We began by peeling and slicing up the apples. Assembly-line style, we were able to get this done pretty quick. We put them into a bowl with a tiny bit of lemon juice, to keep them from browning.
Next I started to simmer up the butter, flour, sugar, and brown sugar concoction as per directed by the recipe. Always my mother's child, I added a tablespoon of vanilla. Eric also had the brilliant idea of adding some Fee's Brother's Bitters to the sauce. It's something we use quite a bit in cocktails, but never before in cooking. After he gave me an apple slice with a bit of the bitters on it, I was sold. I may start using that as an alternative to peanut butter when I eat apples. To the apples, I added cinnamon and nutmeg, a suggestion made by many reviewers of the recipe.
For the pie crust, we used a pre-made Pillsbury refrigerated crust. Next time I may try my own, but for my first attempt at any sort of pie, I thought that it may be better to simplify. After carefully unrolling one crust into the pie pan, in went the apples in their cinnamon and nutmeg-y goodness.
Next came the part that I was dreading the most: the lattice crust. About half of the reviews on this recipe had decided to forgo it, something I was tempted to do myself. However, one review I read said something to the tune of "DO NOT SKIP IT IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND NOT THAT HARD", so I decided to give it a go.
Step 1: roll out the crust and cut it into 1" strips.
So far, so good.
Step 2: Take the two longest strips and place them in a 90 degree cross over the pie.
Step 3: add the rest of the pieces one at a time, weaving them in an over-under fashion, making sure to leave sizeable holes of visible apples.
And there it is. When I finished this I was amazed. Weaving. It's not that hard.
Next I poured the butter-sugar-vanilla concoction over the pie, which left a delicious-looking glaze on the crust. The next time I do this, though, I think I'll seal up the edges of the pie crust first, so that the sauce doesn't go running down the strips of pie crust and onto Eric's nice clean stove.
After rolling up the edge of the pie crust, this baby was ready to go into the oven. 425 degrees for 15 minutes to bake the crust, then 350 degrees for 35-45 minutes. This would have been a good time to clean up the huge mess I had just made, but I decided to go outside and play with Richard the cat instead.
Despite how angry he looks in the photo, he's a sweetie.
After about 45 minutes of playing with cats and resisting the urge to peek into the oven every five minutes to see how my precious baby was coming along, out came the pie!
I'll be darned, it looks like a real pie. After taking it out I was glad that I had decided to heed the advice of the more seasoned piebakers on Allrecipes and put a baking sheet underneath the pie, because man, did that sauce go everywhere during the baking process. It also left a nice, shiny, sugary glaze on the crust, as that particularly adamant reviewer had promised. But just because it looks pretty don't mean it's pie. I'm thankful that we had to leave immediately to go to a concert, because otherwise I may have ended up cutting into it before the filling had a chance to set!
Upon our return later that night I went straight for the pie. We heated it up and served it with ice cream (chocolate chip, as there was no vanilla to be found).
Oh. My. God. Not only was it actually apple pie, it was the best apple pie I've ever tasted. Now, I may be a little biased, but trust me when I say that it's pretty darn good. Saying that I was proud of myself for accomplishing this task would be quite the understatement. I think I spent the rest of the night with a ridiculous grin on my face, repeatedly informing Eric, "I made pie!" I can't think of a single change I would make to this recipe, it was perfect.
Now we just have to figure out what to do with the rest of those apples...
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