Apple Pie

Best Apple Pie Recipe you will find. From scratch. Can be made Vegan.

My sweet friend Shachi made this apple pie last year for thanksgiving and I helped 🙂 It was so much fun to make and just looking at the pictures makes me nostalgic. The perfect November weather in Chandler AZ, lovely company and fun times! Baking this on a lazy afternoon with Shachi Tai amidst several cups of tea and juicy chit-chat and later flaunting it at a potluck dinner meant a day well spent 🙂 I am thinking of making this pie soon again just to reminisce my time in AZ.

Posting this recipe now will ensure my lovely readers have it well in advance for this year’s holiday season 😛

You will need:

For crust (This makes extra dough than needed, but trust me you want to make more and be safe!

3 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tbsp. sugar

10-12 tbsp. butter (replace butter with vegetable shortening, if you need this to be vegan)

6-8 tbsp. ice cold water

Procedure:

• Soften the butter and fold in the dry ingredients. Make the dough with minimal contact with skin (in order to not warm it) and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 20 min.

Lining the Pie Dish:

• Remove the pie dough from the refrigerator and divide in two portions. Roll out a large circle to about 3 mm thickness from half the dough. Do not dust with flour.
• Roll over the pin and transfer onto the glass pie dish.

• Cut edges and shape it to fit in the dish.

Poke holes on the surgade of the pie using a fork and put back in the fridge.

For Pie Filling (this will fill in one 10″ round pie dish)

5 apples peeled and cut into slices (I like to further cut it into smaller pieces)

dry blend: 1 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

Procedure:

• Toss the apple pieces in the lemon juice.
• Add the dry ingredients and mix well. The mixture will get juicy, so this should be the last step before you put the pie together
• Pour this mixture into the prepared Pie dish lined with the crust.

 Final step:

Preheat oven to 400 F

• Place dots of butter (about a tablespoon) on the filling.
• Roll 2/3 of the other half of the dough into another large circle and cover the dish with the filling.

•  Use rest of the dough for decoration and sealing the edge. For this, make a ring and attach it to the edge. Press is in with a spoon edge to make a design as well as seal the joint.
• Bake at 400 F for 50-60 min.

tip: Remove mid-way and wrap foil around the edge to prevent crust edge from burning.

Another important tip is to make some kind of holes on the top of the crust to prevent it from puffing. I popped a hole in the first pie because we didn’t make any holes and it puffed up :/ After repairing that one with our artistic skills, we made another pie a couple days later, this time with a beautiful design with little slits made with a knife 🙂 Lesson learnt!

Serve with some vanilla ice cream. Who said Apple pies are only for the Holiday season!