homemade apple pie

Every year my Mom and I have a big chat before Thanksgiving to figure out who's going to cook each course, what dishes we should make, and what needs to be bought from the store. During our conversation, Josh proclaimed that this year he would be in charge of dessert, and he would be baking a homemade apple pie. I was thrilled - making a homemade latticed apple pie was on my cooking bucket list.

The pie turned out to be fairly straightforward to make. There was quite a few steps and it took a couple of hours (plus some overnight dough chilling time). But we were enjoying some Thanksgiving football and cold beers, so the time really flew by. Plus, there's nothing more all-American and home-y than a freshly baked apple. This may be an annual Thanksgiving tradition.

And when you have leftovers, you can top them with homemade salted caramel ice cream (we added an extra tablespoon of salt to the recipe) and eat them straight out of the pie dish while standing barefoot in your kitchen. 

We followed Thomas Keller's pie crust recipe and then sort of "went with the flow" for the filling recipe (i.e. we made it up as we went along). We filled the uncooked pie crust with the filling and then cut the remaining rolled out pie dough into 1/2 inch strips. We followed this tutorial on creating a pie lattice. 

Apple Pie Filling

makes 1 pie

8 pound of granny smith apples

1 stick butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 lemon, juiced

3 tablespoons flour

Pinch of salt

Peel, core, and slice apples. Saute in a pan over medium heat with 1 stick of butter until apples are slightly softened (but still retain a bite), approximately 10 minutes. Add sugar, lemon juice, flour, and salt. Mix together. The filling should be thick and cling to the apples. If the filling is too thin, add more flour by the tablespoon.