TWD: All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Emily of SandMuffin: all-american, all-delicious apple pie.  When it comes to apples, I can really take them or leave them.  Occasionally I’ll slice one up and dip it in peanut butter, but they’re not a favorite fruit around here.  Baked apples, though – well that’s an entirely different story.  Give me a baked apple dessert any day – in fact, I’m pretty sure that if given the choice between a slice of chocolate cake and a dessert with warm baked apples, the apples win 9 out of 10 times.  So, apple pie this week?  Yep, I was excited.

Unfortunately, Shane came down with a cold last week and passed it to me so I was feeling a bit under the weather when I made the pie yesterday.  My baking mojo was nowhere to be found and all attempts at pie crust were sort of a disaster.  My dough was overworked and mangled, pieced together to create a shell for the apple filling.  Since I’d made Dorie’s pie dough two times in the past week alone, I used a recipe from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book this time, another favorite of mine which has worked beautifully in the past.  I made a mini pie in my 6″ dish using about half of the filling recipe, though I was quite liberal on the measurements.  The only change I made to the recipe was to add lemon juice to the filling along with the lemon zest Dorie already called for.  I baked my mini at 425 F for about 15 minutes then at 375 F for another 30-ish minutes, at which point the juices were bubbling up over the edges and down the side of the dish.

I always find it difficult to wait for fruit pies to cool a bit when they come out of the oven before cutting into them.  They smell so good I just want to dig in!  I did manage to hold out until this pie was just slightly warm, but after that all bets were off.  A healthy “serving” of apple pie may or may not have spoiled my appetite for dinner 🙂  Dorie’s apple pie was definitely a huge hit – I almost always share what I bake, but this pie was all mine!  Though I only used one variety of apples (Cortlands) for my pie, I thought the flavor of the filling was perfect with just the right level of sweetness and spiciness.  And despite my issues with the crust, it still baked up flaky and delicious – the perfect complement to the apple filling.  I think this pie would be equally delicious with a crumb topping and single crust and after seeing that a few of my fellow TWD bakers went that route, I’ll likely give it a go soon, especially given the huge quantity of apples still in my fridge.  

Many thanks to Emily for hosting this week!  You can find the recipe for the apple pie on her blog here or on pages 300-302 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.