Comparing Apples to Oreos II

Happy Thanksgiving! No real cooking for me today, which is good, since I'm up late. ^^;;

I don't really know what possessed me to try making apple pie. Truthfully, I've never been a huge fan of it. I like it well enough, I suppose, but there always seemed to be other, more interesting pies... Or at least, other pies that suited my tastes much better. I'll take pumpkin (yum!), peach, or chocolate cream over apple any day.

I think it started when I was poking around the internet just before Halloween, looking for tips on making caramel apples. I found a neat recipe site, Allrecipes.com, with tons of delicious-sounding cooking concoctions. The apple pie recipe that I found was the highest rated pie recipe on the entire website, so it had to be good, right? The recipe sounded straightforward, and I was eager to try making my first pie. Luckily, I have Sam, who loves apple pie and "sacrificed" himself to be my test subject. I even bought a deeper pie dish, an apple divider, and a food processor just for this occasion.

With Sam moonlighting as both test subject and lovely assistant, we began with the crust. Heralding back to my food hero, I used a pie crust recipe from Good Eats. The crust is simple to make. A cup of flour, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, butter, and lard go into the food processor and are pulsed in stages. I couldn't find lard at the grocery store (It's not gonna kill you, people! Geez!), so I substituted Crisco shortening. Add just enough water for the dough to be able to hold together, then pour into a plastic bag. Shape it into a nice, round disc and store in the fridge for at least half an hour.

My dough was in the fridge for more than an hour when I took it out. I'm not sure if the dough was too cold, or if the shortening made a difference in texture, or if I didn't add enough water, but I found the dough difficult to work with. It cracked when I rolled it out, and was sticky, even when rolling under wax paper. I think I didn't put enough flour, though. Anyway, I eventually got one of the rolled out pie doughs into the dish, patched up the gaps with the extra scraps, and sliced the other dough into strips with our new pizza cutter. Then back into the fridge they went - dish, strips, and scraps - to await the appley goodness to come.

The apple filling was simple, but again, a little time consuming. Peel the apples, core and divide the apples, slice the apples into thin pieces. Then you make a luscious caramel sauce made from sugar, brown sugar, flour, and butter. The recipe didn't call for any spices, but it didn't seem like it'd taste like apple pie without cinnamon and nutmeg, so I added both in with a little bit of vanilla. I also dusted the apple slices with cinnamon, nutmeg, a teeny bit of sugar, and an even smaller bit of flour.

Part of what I love so much about baking is the smell. My apartment was filled with the scent of apples and sweet cinnamon, and I hadn't even baked the pie yet! I arranged the apple slices in the pie starting from the outside in, going around in a circle, following the edge of the dish with the roundish curve of the apples. Halfway up the dish, I stopped to pour about half of the caramel mixture in with the apples and push it around with the spatula so it would flow into all the little crevices between the slices. Then I layered more apples until the dish was slightly over-full.

The recipe called for a lattice top, but I admittedly didn't know how to make a lattice top, and wasn't about to look it up right that instant. I'm terribly impatient when it comes to my little momentary obsessions, and the pie had to get finished. So... I kinda half-assed it. The strips of delicate dough were a little difficult to work with anyway, so it probably would've been more heartache and trouble than I could muster at that moment. In the end, I think it came out rather respectable-looking, if a tad amateurish. After a very light brushing of eggwash (I don't have a proper basting brush) and a dusting of cinnamon on the top, I deemed it worthy to bake.

I was afraid of burning it, so it came out a little pale. But it was pie! My first completely-from-scratch pie! And the smell was wonderful! More apple, more cinnamon, a punch of nutmeg, and a hint of butter. I insisted we let it rest overnight, like good pie bakers, so I made Sam a makeshift apple cobbler with the leftover apples so he'd be sure to leave my poor masterpiece alone.

The next morning, we each had a slice for breakfast. And, boy, was it good. Like I said, I'm not incredibly fond of apple pie, so I was surprised at how much I liked it. The crust was almost melt-in-your-mouth tender, but delightfully flaky at the same time. It didn't provide much support for the pie filling, but I think it's because I rolled it a bit too thin and didn't butter the plate. The filling was, well, how apple pie should taste, with all the spices and vanilla in there, but somehow making the apples taste more like themselves, if that makes sense. It was perhaps a bit too sweet for my tastes, but that didn't stop me come Wednesday evening when I finished off the pie in what should have been a large slice and a half.

And the pie did what it was supposed to do. I learned from my beginner's mistakes and my beginner's triumphs. Sometimes, when I try something new, it gets old to me fast, and I don't have the interest in it anymore after the first try. But I'm excited about trying new types of pie and I don't think I'm done with my baking kick just yet... not by a long shot! Which is good, because I have lots of plans for the Christmas season too.

(Yes, I'm posting this on Monday 11/26, but I started it on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. So... yeah, the date's screwy. You'll deal, right? ^^;; )