Before we get to the pie, Happy February! January was a great start to the new year for the blog. It was my highest traffic month yet, which is super. I also launched a redesign that I am very happy with. I hope to keep going in the right direction. Thanks for coming back often!

Also, I edited my About Me page to add some more questions that you left in the comments last week. If you have other questions, let me know.

Onto pie…

Over the weekend, Jeffrey and I made our first pie! Pies are notorious for having horror stories, but we wanted to try for a neighborhood get-together where I volunteered to bring dessert. I wanted something more exciting than cookies or brownies. We’re ambitious in the kitchen. We like apples. And we trust Ina Garten. (Jeffrey has a crush on her.)

I researched some recipes and Ina’s was the most straight-forward and pretty basic. I also only needed to buy a few new ingredients–9 apples, 1 lemon, all-spice, and shortening. I had everything else.

Here’s a step by step of our pie with pictures:

Deep Dish Apple Pie

Ingredients:

• 4 lbs Granny Smith apples, peeled, quartered, and cored (9 apples for us)
• 1 lemon, zested
• 1 orange, zested
• 2 T fresh lemon juice
• 1 T fresh orange juice
• 1/2 C sugar plus 1 tsp to sprinkle on top
• 1/4 C All purpose flour
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp all-spice

For pie crust:

• 1 egg beaten with 1 T water for egg wash
• 12 T very cold unsalted butter (1.5 sticks)
• 3 C all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 T sugar
• 1/3 C very cold vegetable shortening
• 6-8 T ice water (we used more)

Instructions:

For pie crust:

• Dice butter and return to refrigerator while you prepare the flour mixture. Place the flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse a few times to mix.
• Add the butter and shortening.
• Pulse 8-12 times until the butter is the size of peas. (Ours was more like 20-25 times)
• With the machine running, pour water down the feed tube and pulse until the dough begins to form a ball. (We added more water about 1T at a time)
• Dump out on a floured board and roll into a ball.
• Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400*.

For pie mixture:

• Cut each apple into pieces and combine in a bowl with zests, juices, 1/2 C sugar, flour, salt, spices.

• Roll out half the pie dough and drape it over a 9 or 10-inch pie pan to extend about 1/2 inch over the rim. Don’t stretch the dough. If it’s too small, re-roll it.

• Fill the pie with the apple mixture.

• Brush the edges of the bottom pie crust with the egg wash so the top crust will adhere.
• Top with the second crust and trim the edges to about 1 inch over the rim.
• Tuck the edges of the top crust under the edge of the bottom crust and crimp together with your fingers or a fork.
• Brush the entire top crust with the egg wash, sprinkle with 1 tsp sugar, and cut 4-5 slits.

Bake on 400* for about one hour to 1 1/4 hour. Ours was just at one hour when I started to notice some parts getting very dark so I took it out.

I left my pie on the countertop covered in foil (after it cooled completely) for a day and we warmed it up before serving. It could be served hot immediately, but I wasn’t positive it was going to work so I wanted to bake it ahead of time.

Look at those apples. And that flaky golden brown crust. Oh man. We recommend you make this for your next dinner party.