Blue Ribbon Apple Pie
This was a unique pie for me and also a huge hit! I used a crust calling for half butter and half shortening as I always use, but I swapped the crisco for leaf lard. It was a fabulous swap and worth the effort! (You can certainly use crisco though!) The dough rolled out like a dream!!!! For the filling I made an apple filling in a skillet and it was also amazing. I highly recommend this pie!
You may need:
*Note: This apple pie filling recipe can be used in any apple treats-for a pie, you may want to reduce cooking time by a few mins for firmer apples that will finish baking in the pie. Also, if the mixture becomes too thick-add more water while cooking!
Apple Pie
Ingredients
- Homemade Apple Filling
- 8 medium apples I like to use honey crisp
- 6 tablespoons water
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 2 teaspoon cinnamon
- ⅔ cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 4 tablespoons water
- 1 T. Diced butter
- Pie Crust
- CRUST: adapted from Ina Garten
- 12 tablespoons 1 1/2 sticks very cold butter
- 3 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- ⅓ cup very cold leaf lard or crisco
- 6 to 8 tablespoons about 1/2 cup ice water
Instructions
Filling
- Peel apples, core them and slice into small chunks.
- Melt the butter in a pot over medium and add the cinnamon.
- Stir in the apples, sugar & 6 tablespoons water.
- Cook, stirring every few minutes for only about 3-4 minutes (the apples will finish cooking in the pie so you don't want them too soft).
- In a bowl, combine cornstarch and water.
- Whisk in this slurry to the pot and cook another 2 minutes or until thick.
- If the mixture is too thick and syrupy, add more water to thin out a bit.
- Cool-can refrigerate for another day once cool.
Crust
- Dice the butter and return it to the refrigerator while you prepare the flour mixture. Place the flour, salt, And sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter and leaf lard. Pulse 8 to 12 times, until the butter is the size of peas. With the machine running, pour the ice water down the feed tube and pulse the machine until the dough begins to form a ball. Dump out on a floured board and roll into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Cut the dough in half. Roll each piece on a well-floured board into a circle, rolling from the center to the edge, turning and flouring the dough to make sure it doesn't stick to the board. Fold the dough in half, place in a pie pan, and unfold to fit the pan.
- Fill with apple filling. Dot with diced butter.
- Repeat with the top crust after filling.
- Brush top with 1 egg plus a splash of half and half, then sprinkle with coarse sugar.
- Cut 3 slits.
- Bake at 400 on a pan (in case spills over) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Crust adapted from Ina Garten and Filling adapted from Spend with Pennies
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