A Really Easy Caramel Pecan Apple Pie Recipe You Might Want to Try
I mentioned yesterday that I baked a caramel pecan apple pie. We had some surplus homemade pastry dough and granny smith apples from the two granny smith apple pies I made on Thanksgiving, using my favorite apple pie recipe. I wanted to try something different, and needed to find another apple pie recipe that didn’t require a top crust as I had just enough to cover the bottom of a pie pan to use the leftovers. I began the search, ultimately settling upon a perfectly rated derivation from a publisher called Taste of Home. I was a bit wary at first because it called for pre-made pie shell and store-bought caramel but the first wasn’t applicable in this situation, and the second I was able to somewhat compromise by picking up the higher-priced Smucker’s Delight line that is almost identical to the homemade stuff both in ingredients and flavor.
Not only would it allow me to clear out my remaining ingredients, I figured I’d send it out to friends and family to get feedback on whether it should become a staple of the kitchen. Everyone was evenly divided. Half liked the normal, old-fashion latticework apple pie, the other half liked this ridiculously excessive, streusel-topped nutritional bomb that contained a grand total of – wait for it – 4,864 calories. Each pie, equal to 1/8th of the pie, comes in at 608 calories per slice. For a typical, grown adult that isn’t too bad given you are supposed to have 2,000 calories in a day, provided you’ve budgeted for it.
I used eight granny smith apples. The recipe said you can use any tart apple. It needs to offset the sweetness of the caramel and sugar.
Peel those apples …
Once peeled, cut them up and put the apple chunks into a bowl. Toss it with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Next, you need to prepare that bowl over to the right …
… which contains 3/4 cup chopped pecans, 1/3 cup packed brown sugar, 3 tablespoons white sugar, 4.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon, and 1 tablespoon cornstarch.
Mix that second bowl together so it forms a powdery, pecan assortment that resembles a desert landscape with rocks.
Next, dump the powdery mixture from the right bowl into the left bowl, which held your apples, which are already coated in the lemon juice and vanilla we talked about.
Put 1 unbaked 9-inch pastry shell into a pie dish. I had four extra scraps of homemade pie dough I needed to use left over from Thanksgiving. They did not want to blend together so it looks a bit of a mess since I had to hack it by manually shoving it into the nooks and crannies.
Use 1/4 cup caramel ice cream topping, at room temperature, to coat the bottom of the pastry shell.
Dump your entire mixed bowl of apples, pecans, sugar, etc., into the caramel-coated pastry shell …
… and melt 3 tablespoons of butter. Pour that melted butter over the top of the pie filling.
In a new bowl, we need to start the streusel topping for the pie. Take 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, 2/3 cup chopped pecans, and 1/4 cup sugar …
… and mix it together.
Finally, cut 6 tablespoons of cold butter into small chunks that you mix into the bowl by hand until the whole thing looks like a loose, crumbly topping.
Sprinkle that topping over the pie. Bake it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 55 to 65 minutes or “until filling is bubbly and topping is browned” according to the recipe source.
Once it’s baked, the moment it comes out of the oven, drizzle 1/4 cup of caramel ice cream topping on the pie. Cool on a wire rack until it’s reached a safe temperature to eat, which might take an hour or three.
Look at that caramel pecan goodness …
Oh yeah …
Personally, I like the other pie best but I have lost the ability to just bake one as there are family members demanding this be remade. This streusel topping is worth having in the recipe file by itself, though.
Reader Comments (3)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath the comments to which they respond.
Rob
December 8, 2014
I believe others have mentioned it before, but just as a heads-up all your posts dated from December 3 - December 8 all showed up on your site as once. I assume some of those may have been set to private prior to tonight, but wanted to let you know in case it was a hosting issue.
FratMan
February 12, 2015
1. What do you think of Ramit Sethi's style?
2. I know an older woman from Owensboro, Missouri. She is an older lesbian, and has had the same partner for almost four decades. Her mom died young, and her dad did not accept throughout the remainder of her life even though they continued to spend the holidays together. When her father passed away, he gave equal mention to his daughter's partner in life and said that he considered her his own daughter and offered a few final lines about his pride in how the two of them developed.
My question is this: Why act like that? I understand people who are bad and try to cover up their misdeeds to act good; why have the point of goodness in a way that would truly make your daughter happy, but act worse? The best theory I can develop on my own is that we all have these scripts in our head of how we are supposed to act, and he followed it in disapproving of his daughter's lifestyle. I remember once being called a picky eater by a family member. Seeing them shortly thereafter, they'd only see me eat chicken fingers and mac and cheese, and other kid's foods. Eventually, when they were around, I was like--no, I like X, Y, and Z, and I'll eat it--and she expressed her shock when I didn't conform to their expectations. Obviously, that's a super small example, but it makes me think that saying things to people as a preface "you're bold" "you're a rule-breaker" "you know to respect the law" carries actually import that affects behavior.
Joshua Kennon
February 15, 2015
Replying to FratMan
Send me your phone number in the contact form; I'll try and call sometime because this would be easier to talk about over the phone rather than write it on my iPhone screen (I'm at a gas station in St. Louis at the moment so hopefully this gets through.)