Fall is my favorite season for many reasons: the colors start changing, new flavors become available, and there are many outdoor activities to enjoy. It's only a matter of time before apple picking season is upon us, so being September I felt it was time to bring out the pie dish as a celebration of what's to come, and to brush up on my pie-making skills.
My go-to apples for this pie are Cortlands, and everyone who has had a slice agrees. Aunt Pam uses whatever is available: Macintosh, Brookfield and Liberty, just to name a few. Read up on the apples and try them out to see what you like best, but promise me you'll try Cortlands at least once. When filling your pie plate, you will want the filling to be piled high because the filling with sink and settle once it begins to bake.
For the pie dough recipe, see Blueberry Pies. Ingredients are flour (2 cups), salt (3/4 tsp), Crisco (2/3 cups) and cold water (6-7 tbs). For my deep 9.5" pie plate, I made 1.5x the normal amount so I had some extra dough for the cut-out leaves or snow flakes, which I bought at Crate & Barrel. When you make the dough, make sure to use a little more for the bottom to conform to the dish. The picture above is a 9" shallow pie plate and I just made 1 dough recipe and had a little left over.
Yield: 1 pie
Ingredients (pie filling):
6-7 apples (approx. 2 quarts), peeled, cored & thinly sliced
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp cinnamon
Directions:
Pre-heat over to 425. Put peeled and sliced apples in a large bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until apples are covered. Fill the bottom of your pie plate (mine is 9.5" in diameter and 2" deep) with rolled-out pie dough so it covers and hangs slightly over the edges of the plate. Your dough can be rolled out thinly but you don't want it to become transparent. Fill the pie plate with all of the filling. Cover the filling and crimp the edges of the dough so that filling won't overflow. Cut away excess dough. Cut slits into the top of the pie (a cursive letter is enough), and bake for 14 minutes at 425. Then, lower the temperature to 350 and bake for 30 minutes. If you have a pie crust saver, put it one when you drop the temperature to 350.