Baking a Granny Smith Apple Pie In the Middle of the Night

I had some work to do but I just couldn’t focus.  Still, I wanted to be productive.  We had a giant bag of Granny Smith apples, butter, sugar, brown sugar, flour, and other ingredients left over from Thanksgiving, so I decided to mess around with apple pie recipes.  The flavor turned out beyond my expectations.

The finished Granny Smith apple pie, right as I put it on the cooling tray … once it is a bit further along, I will sprinkle it with granulated white sugar as a garnish.

I ended up using a total of 20 tablespoons of unsalted butter, more than half a cup of white sugar, half a cup of brown sugar, some water, two to three cups of high quality flour, table salt, vegetable shorting, and eight or so Granny Smith apples, which was the amount needed to fill the pie once the dough had been wrapped around the edges of the pie pan.  I started around 1:30 a.m. and the pie finished around 3:30 a.m.

[mainbodyad]My original plan had been to make a second pie, filled with various layers of pudding, and topped with crushed oreos and whipped cream, just like the five-minute layered dessert I showed you back in April, but I am too tired to make a second round of pie dough.

Of all the skills I developed in life, some voluntarily, some highly encouraged by parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents – musical, financial, et cetera – the tradition of the great-grandmother-cook-it-all-from-scratch is definitely one of my favorite things.  It’s so satisfying to create something, and have it turn out really, really good.

Not only that, but it allows you to live well, while spending far less money.  A comparable handmade pie from somewhere like Williams-Sonoma costs $60.00.  This was a mere fraction of that.  I haven’t added up the ingredient list but it’s most definitely below $10.00.  My initial back-of-the-envelope calculation is $1.25 per slice – and the slices are huge.  There are no preservatives.  There are no fillers.  It’s food.  Actual food.

I’m thinking that it might be time to focus on pies for a few months and perfect our blueberry pie, apple pie, and cherry pie recipes.  The key lime pie and lemon meringue pies were settled ten years ago after a lot of testing, but we never got around to the other varieties of fruit pies back then.

Here are some pictures of the process …

Granny Smith Applie Pie Before Getting Brown Sugar and Butter Melt … I was putting the rough strips on before evening out the edges.  The oven was preheating at this point.

Granny Smith Apples for Pie

Brown Sugar and Butter Filling for Granny Smith Apple Pie

Unlike the pumpkin pies from Thanksgiving, where I wanted a moist pie dough, the apple pie should be crisper, so there was no substituting half of the water content with vodka.

The family had a couple of pieces tonight, while it was still warm, but it will be fantastic once it has fully set in the refrigerator and paired with vanilla bean ice cream.

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