Gardening

Gardening
communtiy garden in Brooklyn

Friday, February 26, 2010

American Pie






The best thing about pie, is the crust. It should be anyway. If you take the time to make a delcious flaky crust, you won't regret it. I made 4 pie crusts all at one time, used 2 of them for the pie, and froze the other two. Next time I have a craving to make something sweet, I'll already have the crust ready to go. Just thaw the frozen crust at room temperature. Here is a delicious pie crust recipe compliments of my mother-in-law, pie make extraordinaire, Kathy Beach:


3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup shortening
1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick)
1 T. cider vinegar
1 egg
ice water (about 5 oz)

In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients. Add in shortening and sliced butter and mix with a pastry cutter and finish with fingers until mixture resembles small peas.
Stir together egg and cider vinegar. Add enough ice water to make approximately 6 oz. Make a well in center of dough mixture. Add most of the liquid all at once and stir quickly and gently with fork until just incorporated. Add more liquid if not holding together, but not too much or it will be sticky. Do not over mix.
Form into 4 disks. Wrap with seran wrap and chill.
Gently roll into pie shells ,using plenty of flour.
Disks can also be frozen well covered. Thaw at room temperature.

For the apple pie, I used an assortment of apples from the Farmer's market. I added lemon juice (to keep the apples from turning brown), cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg.

For the egg wash, I used an egg yolk and heavy cream.

I baked the apple pie at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes, then at 350 degrees for another 40 minutes.

We enjoyed it with some homemade cinnamon vanilla ice cream and friends!

1 comment:

  1. melissa is making this right now and using her new pie-weights!! we are total dorks!

    ReplyDelete