Angela's Apple Pie
- The best pies have the tartest apples,
- You can modify the spices and their amounts to your taste, and if you have no taste, that ain’t my fault, and
- When baking your pie, line a cookie sheet with tin foil, and bake pie on top of foil to catch any apple pie guts that may bubble out.
- A word about crusts: you can put on a top crust, leave your pie naked, or make it “Dutch” by topping it with a streusel topping.
Ingredients
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (or more or less)
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
2-3 dashes ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons flour or corn starch
6 cups thinly sliced Granny Smith apples (I usually cut mine in 3/4″ chunks)
1 to 3 teaspoons lemon juice
2 ready-made pie crusts (or just one if you decide to go naked or use a streusel topping)
2 tablespoons Butter
1 egg, beaten badly (only if you do a double crust)
Preheat oven to 350F. Butter 9″ pie plate and add pastry crust. Fork sides and bottom and then trim and crimp edges.
Bake crust 7 to 10 minutes, or until it is slightly browned. Remove from oven.
Combine sugars, spices, salt, and corn starch in a mixing bowl. Add apples and lemon juice (the amount of lemon juice depends on how tart your apples are). Toss lightly.
Pour apple mixture into pie crust; dot with butter. Cover a cookie sheet in foil.
For double pie crust: Cover pie with other crust, turn edges under rim of dish to seal. Brush top crust with beaten egg. Cut slits in top to allow for steam to escape during baking.
For Dutch pie: sprinkle streusel topping over apples; make sure butter chunks are evenly distributed.
Place pie onto prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 1 to 2 hours, or until apples are fork-tender. Watch crust/topping and make sure it doesn’t get too brown. If it does, tear off a sheet of foil and place this on top of the parts that are cooking too fast. Don’t tuck the foil down, just leave it on loose.
When pie is done, remove from heat, cool for 20 minutes, and serve.