Blue Ribbon Apple Pie

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:

Leaf lard

*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

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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