FINALLY! and Apple Crumble Pie Revisited

FINALLY!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.  We watched it yesterday and Ted actually kept his eyes open, didn’t read a book, and watched most of it with me.  Another good Harry Potter movie and the last one.  So sad. 

I haven’t got myself absorbed into a series since Harry Potter came out years ago.

Are you reading any series right now? Any you would recommend?

Apple Crumble Pie

This is my self declared famous pie. You can find it on my recipe page. I only made one change in the following recipe which was to increase the spices by 1 teaspoon.

Pastry recipe:  Buy the refrigerated pie dough if you want to save time.

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 3/4  tsp salt
• 2/3 cups cold unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup cold milk

Mix flour and salt. Cut in the butter to resemble course meal. Sprinkle the milk over the dough and mix with your hand only until it holds together. This is when you can really ruin pastry if you over mix it or handle it too much. Divide the dough in half and flatten to a disk. Wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

Roll the dough out into a 12” round. Fit into a 9” pie plate. Crimp edges and pierce all over with a fork. Put back into the fridge for 1/2 hour while you mix the filling and preheat the oven to 450 F.

Topping:

• 1/2 cup + 2 TBS Flour,
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar,
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar,
• 2 tsp. apple pie spice,
• 1 stick cold butter (cut into small pcs.).

For topping: mix flour, sugars,  spice and cut in butter. Blend to make a course crumb. I end up using my jewelry free, washed hands (I say this because jewelry and fingernails carry a lot of germs- so wash up!).

Filling:

• 7 med. apples (about 3 1/4lbs)-peeled, cored, sliced *about 1/8″ thick slices.
• 1 TBS lemon juice.
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar.
• 3 TBS flour.
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon.
• 1 tsp apple pie spice.
• 1 tsp vanilla-butter extract. (If you can’t find vanilla-butter extract, simply use 1 tsp vanilla and add 1 TBS unsalted softened butter to the filling.)

For filling: place the prepared apples in a bowl and toss with the lemon juice. Mix the remaining ingredients into the apples and toss to coat. I use a wooden spoon to mix the filling together.

Prepare Pie: layer the apple slices in pie shell, mounding high in the center. Pat topping over top of the apples to form a crust. In the picture with this recipe, you might notice walnuts around inside edge of pie crust, if there is a little gap, make use of it and put walnut pieces in there. They come up semi-caramelized due to the filling melting and bubbling up around them. Place on foil in the oven (because it probably will boil out) and bake 15 minutes. * Recommended you use a pie crust cover – but not necessary. Reduce the heat to 350 F and bake an additional 45 minutes.

Heat it up. Add some French Vanilla ice cream, let it melt a little bit, then get ready to experience one of the best apple crumble pies EVER.