simple apple pie

Hi everyone!

It's only 16 days til Christmas, can you believe it? December is one of those months that seems to come out of nowhere. I know that's kinda dumb to say, since all the months last the same amount of time lol, but December seems to start and end in the span of two days.

I like Christmas, though. I like to bake at this time of the year, because it makes me feel productive - even if I've stayed in the house all day.

Normally I make pecan pie because my family really loves it, but I haven't made it this year because I haven't been able to find corn syrup in the shops. So I've been making fruit pies instead.

Today I wanted to share a suuuper simple apple pie recipe, it takes no time at all and a very little amount of ingredients!

Oh, also I just wanted to say that I am aware my pie isn't a perfect slice and looks more like a... mountain of apples.

There is a reason: I underestimated how hot the dish was when I was taking it out the oven, and I unfortunately dropped the pie. And then I cried for 5 minutes because of it.

So, be careful and you can avoid tears!

Apple Pie Recipe (makes 1 small pie)

Ingredients - Crust (from here - it makes 2 pie crusts)

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

2 sticks chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces

iced water

Ingredients - Apples

2 medium red apples

1/2 cup melted butter

1tbsp cinnamon

brown sugar (I never measure this exactly)

Method

To make the dough for the pie crust, mix the flour, sugar and salt in a medium-size bowl. Then cut the sticks of butter into pieces and work it into the flour. You can use a blender, however, I do not have one so I just used my hands. After the butter, you'll want to add some iced water to form the dough - I used about 4 tablespoons this time, but you can add more of less depending on if you need it. 

Divide dough in half, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

For the apples, I firstly cut the apples into slices and sprinkled the sugar and cinnamon on top. Then, I melted the butter in a mini egg fry pan (those things are great) and mixed everything together.

So, after your pie crust has chilled, you can bring it out and roll it into your dish. I put a layer of crust on the bottom of the dish (and poked holes in it) and then I tried to do a design for the top, just to make it more festive! I wanted to do little leaves, because I saw that on Pinterest and it looked cute - but circular snowflakes are easier.

At this point, you'll want to bake it for 15 minutes. I used thermostat 7 which I think is 180 degrees? I really don't know, it's a French oven. You can probably use your normal oven heat, it'll be fine. Just watch it so it doesn't get burnt.

And that's it! I use this pie crust always, I think it's really great - it's almost foolproof. But it isn't  because it's baking. And nothing is actually foolproof with baking, because even a different room temperature can change the outcome of a cake. Or is that just when I bake?

- Iona