Crumb Apple Pie

Mix up and refrigerate the pie crust. Run to the store and get more butter. Maybe get some heavy whip for vanilla whipped cream. Maybe the sales associates will assume you’re a very unhealthy person. Maybe they think you’re weird for getting giant bacon dog treats along with the fatty goodness. For sure you get home and finish the making home made pie and the joke’s on them. Don’t forget to “cheers!” your first bite. And with a clink of forks, it’s the first apple pie of the season.

I’m still surprised that childhood recipes are actually possible on any given day. Potato rolls with dinner? No problem. Crumb Apple pie because Jake and I are feeling especially seasonal? Let’s make it. I still save some things just for the holidays, just so they remain something for special occasions.

Crumb Apple Pie
Recipe from Farm Journal’s Complete Pie Cookbook + my childhood

Ingredients:

• Unbaked 9″ pie shell (recipe below)

Apple Filling-

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 T flour
• 1/2 – 1t cinnamon
• 1/8 t nutmeg
• 1/4 t salt
• 6-7 cups sliced 1/4 inch thick,  peeled apples

Crumb Topping-

• 1/2 cup coldish butter, cubed
• 1/2 cup brown sugar firmly packed
• 1 cup flour

Directions:

1. Make pastry for 1-crust pie and line 9″ pie pan. (recipe below)
2. Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix lightly through apples. Heap in pastry-lined 9″ pie pan.
3. Make crumb topping by rubbing butter into flour and brown sugar, until it resembles coarse crumbs and sprinkle evenly over the apples.
4. Bake in a hot 400 F for 45-55 minutes. (After about 30 minutes some crumbs were getting a bit too tan (burnt!) but the pie wasn’t done. If this happens to you, simply tent foil over the pie and bake for the remaining amount of time.)
5. Allow to cool for about 20 minutes and slice and eat.
6. Serve with vanilla ice cream or simple Vanilla Whipped Cream.

One 9″ Pie Crust
Recipe from Martha Stewart

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 t sugar
• 1 stick chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 2-3 T ice water

Directions:

1. Whisk together dry ingredients (flour, salt and sugar). Cut 1 stick of butter into pieces.  Using your hands (or pastry blender), rub butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal.
2. Add 2 tablespoons ice water; work with hands until dough comes together. If dough is still crumbly, add more ice water a tablespoon at a time until it forms a nice dough when pressed together.
3. Flatten dough into a disk and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
4. Roll out and line a 9″ pie pan.

This is the pie recipe is from my childhood, and my mom just mailed me the cookbook. See the star by the variation for the crumb apple pie? Delish, and memorable.