Lubbock Boy Apple Pie

A Proper Apple Pie baked by a Lubbock Boy

      
      Read this whole recipe before you start.  It will help you understand how to do this.  It is not hard, but does take some patience and time.

       Pie crust is an art form.  My favorite is a flaky combination of flour, lard, egg, vinegar and ice water.  If I was going to enter this pie in a contest, I would use that recipe, but for ease and convenience, prepared crusts are available at the local supermarket and they’re not bad.   Some come frozen in a pie pan and others are in the refrigerator case,  two to a box.  Either works fine.  The frozen ones with the pan are great if you are going to give the pie away and you don’t have to worry about getting your Grandmother's favorite ceramic pie pan returned.

       If you don’t have a nine inch pie pan, don’t worry about it.  Go to the store and buy a nine inch, deep-dish frozen pie crust.  They come with a foil pan and usually two to a package.  Unwrap them when you are ready to make the pie and let them thaw out. Preheat the oven to 350.

        Peel six to nine Granny Smith apples, depending upon what size they are.  The way I do it is peel an apple, slice it up and put it in a big bowl, then peel another apple and slice it up.  That way, I can tell when I have enough apples and not too many.

        To slice up an apple for my pie, I do it this way:  Peel the whole apple, then cut it in half, right down the middle from stem to stern.  Lay each half, cut side down, on the cutting board.  Cut the apple in ¼ inch thick slices, starting at one edge, going top to bottom and working across the apple.  You should get about eight or ten slices, straight on one edge and half round on the other.  Little half circles. The first three slices should be clean, then the next four or so will have some core, seeds, stem and some peel that was deep down in each end.  Cut all that stuff out and discard it.  The last three or so slices should also be clean.  Now, you should have about eight or ten half circle slices, some of them with little triangles clipped out of the middle, where you took out the seeds and core.  The smaller ones will be clean half circles.  Do the other half-apple the same way, then peel and do the rest, one at a time until you have all the apples you need in a good sized mixing bowl.

     In a separate mixing bowl, put ½ cup of regular sugar; 3/4 cup of brown sugar: 1 teaspoon (or more to taste) of cinnamon; three tablespoons of flour; ½ teaspoon nutmeg and ½ teaspoon ground cloves.  Mix all dry stuff together and pour over the apples and shake and stir until all are more or less coated with the flour and sugar and the spices.  If you don’t have all this stuff, don’t worry and don’t buy it just for this pie.  Use a cup and a half of white sugar, the cinnamon and the flour and it will be just fine.  If you don’t have cinnamon, and are going to have to buy it anyway, you might buy “Apple Pie Spice” which is in the store with the spices—if you cannot find it, just buy cinnamon.

        After you have the apples all coated with the flour and sugar and spices, put them into the pie shell that has thawed.  They should mound up in the center and be flush with the edges.  Cut up ½ stick of butter in little pieces and scatter it around on top of the apples.  Pour about 1/3 cup of whipping cream over the apples and let it run down inside.  The cream, butter, sugar and apple juice will cook as the pie bakes and make a sort of custard inside the pie.  Take the other thawed crust and put it over the pie and trim it to size, then take a fork and push it down all around the edge or use your fingers to weld the crusts together.  The crusts will stick together better if you brush the edges with water before you begin to crimp the edge.

     Cut five or six long slits in the top crust, to let the steam out.  You can also cut decorative holes if you want, or cut the dough into strips and make a lattice top pie.  Anything to let the steam out and make it look good is fine.  If you do a lattice top, crimp the edges  just like with a solid top.

     Now, take an egg and break it into a cup and stir it up with a fork and a tablespoon of water until it’s all yellow and smooth.  This is called an “egg wash”.  Brush it all over the top crust—this will make it brown up really nice.  Sprinkle the top with sugar if you want.  Put the pie in a preheated, 350 degree oven for about ten or fifteen minutes, until it starts to look slick on top.  Then cover the whole pie loosely with foil and let it cook.  (The first fifteen minutes helps the crust start to cook and keeps the foil from sticking to the pie.)

     Let the pie cook that way for at least an hour, then take off the foil and let the pie brown up, usually not more than twenty or thirty minutes.  Watch it closely after it has been in the oven for about forty five minutes.  The trick is to cook and bubble the filling until all that butter and cream mixes with the flour and spices and apple juice so it gets cooked all through without burning the crust.  If you just put it in without the foil, the crust will burn to a crisp before the middle gets done.  It will still be good, but there will be burned crust and semi-raw apple in every bite. 

     When the crust is properly brown and the filling is bubbling, remove the pie and let it cool on a rack for about thirty minutes.  Let everyone smell it as they eat supper.  (I know it should be "dinner", but in Lubbock we ate dinner at noon and supper in the evening.) Cut and serve the warm pie.  Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla on top is pure Texan and really good.

     When you first start, before you turn on the oven to preheat, cover the bottom of the oven with foil.  This pie will boil over and burn on the bottom of the oven and stink to high heaven.  With a piece of foil down there, it will still boil over, but all you have to do is wad up the foil and throw it away and the oven is clean.

List of Ingredients: 

Two frozen pie crusts; Six or eight Granny Smith Apples; ½ cup of regular sugar; ¾ cup of brown sugar;  Three tablespoons flour; 1 teaspoon cinnamon (more if you like); ½ teaspoon nutmeg;  ½ teaspoon ground cloves; ½ stick of butter or margarine; 1/3 cup of whipping cream (more if you want, but not more than ½ cup total);  one egg and some water for the egg wash..