With so many apple pie recipes out there, it’s very hard picking the right one. But the right one is actually the one that you share with your loved ones.
Here is the one that I share with my family, and today, I want to share the story and the recipe with you.
My mom was a diabetic.
And she loved sweets as much as everyone else.
The hardest part of being a diabetic for her was avoiding the sweets. And, since apples are generally recommended for diabetics, apple pie was her answer and satisfaction for her sweet tooth.
Because of that, I ate apple pie since I can remember. Over the years, we tried hundreds of recipe variations – with eggs and without eggs, with regular white sugar, with different diabetic supplements for sugar, with Granny Smith apples, with Idared apples etc.
She also played with different apple cuts, different pans and different tops.
And I don’t think she was ever completely satisified with any of the recipes until I started baking on my own and found some old recipe, which we then combined with some of her favorite results thus far, and voila – we finally got it.
The Perfect Homemade Apple Pie which became No.1 Apple Pie recipe in my family is here to be shared with you and your family for lots and lots of generations to come.
FOR DOUGH:
500 grams of flour
10 grams of vanilla sugar
10 grams of baking powder
Pinch of salt
200 grams of caster sugar
250 grams of butter (directly out of fridge)
8 spoons of ice-cold water
Sift and combine flour, vanilla sugar, baking powder, salt and caster sugar on a flat surface or in a bowl.
Take the butter out of the fridge and cut on smaller pieces.
Get dirty – combine flour mixture with butter.
Add 8 spoons of ice-cold water or a little more if needed and knead until you get nice non-sticky dough.
Cut the dough in four pieces. If you’re going to use the whole dough at once, put two pieces in freezer and two in the fridge, otherwise put three pieces in the freezer and just one in the fridge.
FOR APPLE FILLING (this is for complete dough):
3 Granny Smith apples
3-4 sweet apples (Idared)
2 spoons of cinnamon
Juice of 1 lemon
4-6 spoons of brown sugar
4-6 spoons of bread crumbs
Peel the apples and grate them in a bowl. Squeeze them to remove part of the apple juice. Add some lemon juice depending on what kind of apples you used. If you used sweet apples, put the juice of two lemons, but if you used mix as recommended, than use only 1 lemon juice.
Add cinnamon and some brown sugar – again, depending on what kind of apples you used and how sweet you want it to be.
In the end, add some bread crumbs. They will absorb extra apple juice, but still keep the filling moist and juicy.
Combine the mixture.
Take the dough out of the fridge, put some flour and roll it out. Cover the bottom and sides of your pie plate while leaving some extra dough for the rim.
I love a simple rim that I decorate with my fork. Nothing too complicated.
Put the filling on the dough and then take the part of the dough that you put in the freezer. Grate it and top the pie with it.
I like to put some more brown sugar on the top. It caramelizes and makes the top extra crispy which I love.
Heat the oven to 180oC and bake for 45 minutes.
Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream or wait till it cools down. Leave it open so the crust stays crispy.
Let me know if you tried it out :)
