Recipe: Apple Pie

Its Apple Pie. Yummilicious Apple Pie.  Do you want me to talk and describe or should I just get onto the recipe? ... I thought so...

Ingredients:

The Crust:

2.5 cups of all purpose Flour
200 grams of softened butter. (not melted)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
8 tablespoons of ice cold water. (I used melted ice)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
A dash of nutmeg powder
1 tablespoon honey

The Filling

4 or 5 Apples (I used red delicious washington apples)
2 tablespoons of all purpose Flour
1 cups of white sugar
1.5 tablespoons of Cinnamon powder
1/4 tablespoon of nutmeg powder
2 tablespoons of Honey
1 tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar

Along with that, you can keep a large bowl, half filled with water, and a tea spoon of lemon juice ready.

Lets COOK!!!!

Important Advice: If this is your first time making apple pies, make extra dough. Increase all the ingredients by proportion. If some goes to extra, just put it in the oven to bake, its going to taste like buttery shortbread when it comes out.
Sift out the flower in a bowl/pot. Add in your dry ingredients like salt, sugar, cinnamon powder and nutmeg.

For this recipe you want your ingredients to be as cold as possible. Even your butter should be left out to soften on its own. If you need to microwave your butter, do not let it melt inside.

Add in your butter to the flour.

 

Pour in the honey.

Mix together your dough gently. Add the cold water one teaspoon at a time. As my mom described it, your dough should feel dry. It should just about barely hold together.
Wrap your dough in some plastic and set it to refrigerate for a good 20 minutes. Thats up in the freezer section. You want your dough cold.

While our dough is getting cold, its time to work on the filling.

Start with pouring out the cup of sugar into a large mixing bowl.

Add in your cinnamon powder. I tend to go a bit overboard with cinnamon, I just love it that much. You cannot get too much cinnamon in your apple.

Add in your nutmeg. I just sprinkle a dash of it on. 

I love the fact that my mother enjoys collecting ingredients. It was the bottle of Apple cider vinegar that we have in our pantry that inspired me make apple pie in the first place. Add in a tablespoon of the stuff. 

Add your 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 to 2 tablespoons of honey and mix the whole thing together. Cover and keep it to the side while you prepare your apples.

I love these Washington Red Delicious apples. Peel, slice and core them to your desired size. A piece of advice, smaller is better here. 

Interesting tip: If you let the cut pieces soak in a bowl of water which has a teaspoon of lemon juice added to it , they wont turn brown while you are busy cutting the rest of the apples. I guess the acid in the lemon juice prevents the iron in the apples from oxidizing.

Once your apples are cut, drain the water and throw them into the bowl with the sugar mixture. Mix it around completely and make sure the apples are well coated with the spices.

Can I just add that it looks and smells yummy? It took some serious willpower to not eat half of it right then and there.
Start up your oven and get it to 220 degrees centigrade. 
By now your dough should be ready, so take it out of the fridge.

Cut it into two halves. Take one half and roll it to the size of your Pie dish. Bit of advice from Mommy: Put it between two sheets of plastic, makes rolling the dough a lot easier.
Lay the dough onto your pie dish. Use a fork to poke holes in it to let out the steam.

Add in the filling.

 

I put 5-6 lumps of butter on the filling. This melts and merges with the apples, increasing the richness of the flavours. 

You can now roll out the top crust, or weave it in a net. Mom showed me an easy way of doing this. Put two strips in the center vertically. On top put two strips horizontally. Now move from the center outwards, adding one strip on each side, first on horizontally, and then vertically. 

To prevent the edges from browning too much, cover them with aluminum foil.

If your oven is up to temperature, pop the apple pie in. You would want to bake it for about 15 minutes at 220, and then lower the temperature down to about 190-200 degrees for another 30-40 minutes.

It is ready when the crust is a golden brown and the juices start to seep up. Remove and serve it nice and warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. YUMMMMM!!!!