Apple Pie

Is there anything more American than apple pie? It is something many people associate with America, not lastly because of the movies. However, lets not do anything nasty with this pie, ok? My husband loves apple pie and my mom always has to make him a few when she comes to visit. I rarely make them. I'm not a huge fan of pie or cake. For some reason pie always seems so intimidating, but actually it's pretty easy.
I used a Julia Child's recipe for the dough and an abridged recipe of hers for the filling, modified according to my mom's recommendations.
Lets get cracking! Starting with the dough recipe:

So Julia cares more than I do. Or, maybe not...
She calls for 1.5 cups of all purpose flour and half a cup of plain bleached cake flour.

2 cups of flour it is!

OK, for real now!
2 c flour
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
2 T shortening
2 T sugar
1/4 t salt
1/2 c cold water (ice cold, baby!)

Put your two cups of flour in the standmixer. (I hope you have one. Otherwise you can use a bowl and pastry cutter)

Add your 2 T sugar.

Add your salt.

Now mix your dry ingredients.

Cut in your 2 T of shortening.

Cut in your butter.

This means cut it into smaller pieces and mix with your beater until the butter is in pea sized pieces.

Now you can add in your 1/2 c water. Make it as cold as you can.

Mix it up. But not too long, you don't want the dough to get too tough. I wrapped it up and put it in the fridge while I made the filling.

Now lets get started on the filling.

4 T brown sugar
2 T cinnamon
2 T flour
Lemon juice (The juice of half a lemon and the lemon zest - the lemons at the store all looked nasty so I used bottled juice, a good healthy squeeze)
5 Apples
Nutmeg
Clove (My mom recommended a tad bit of clove, but I was out so I didn't add it.)

First I put the cinnamon and sugar into a bowl and added the lemon juice. I also added a dash of nutmeg. I would have added a little bit of clove if I would have had it.

Mix it all up.

Now I start peeling and cutting up the apples. After each apple I would mix it up with the lemon juice and spice mix. The lemon juice will help prevent the apples from getting brown. It's also like a little marinade.

Here you can see that I was a space cadet and forgot to peel one of the apples. Oh, well, vitamins, right? The funny thing, I made two batches, and did it on both of them. Oops.

When you've cut up all of your apples add 2 to 2.5 T flour and mix it all together.

Now it's time to get your pie dough back out of the refrigerator. Cut it in half. Return one half back to the refrigerator. Roll the other half out and cut it to size so you can line your pie dish.

Put the dough into the pie dish and trim the edges down.

Now that you've lined your pie dish, add in your apples.

Now I took a second pie dish to cut out another round that's a bit bigger than your pie dish for the top.

I used a cookie cutter to cut out some shapes. My smallest cookie cutter is a dragon. Then I put the cut out dragons back onto the blank spots.

Here you can see on my second pie I sprinkled it with sugar too.
This pie is a bit different. I used whole wheat pastry dough that I was given. I was curious to see how it would turn up. My husband said they tasted almost the same, so if you feel like trying out a slightly healthier version, go for it.

So when I asked my husband to help take pictures since my hands were covered in flour, he snuck in one of me. You get to see how excited I am when I'm making pies at 1 in the morning. lol

I didn't bake my pie until we got to my brother-in-law's house. I made a quickie little egg wash out of an egg and a bit of half and half before I baked it. Then I put it in the oven for 45 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. It could have probably stayed in a bit longer if you like.

And here you can see the two pies next to each other. The left one was made with the whole wheat pastry dough, and the other with regular white.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream. Yumm!