Homemade Apple Crumb Pie
Apple Crumb Pie, made with fresh apples, brown sugar and warm fall spices.
Servings: 8 Slices
Calories: 293kcal
Ingredients
- 5 lbs Apples Granny Smith or other tart, dense apple
- 1/2 cup Brown Sugar packed
- 1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
- 1/3 cup Flour
- 1/2 tsp Kosher salt or slightly less table salt
- 1/4 tsp Lemon zest
- 2 tbsp Lemon juice
- 1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp Nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp Cardamom
- 1 tsp Vanilla
For the Crumble
- 1 1/2 cups Flour
- 3/4 cup Brown Sugar
- 1/3 cup Granulated Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Kosher salt or slightly less table salt
- 3/4 cup Butter melted
For the Crust
- 3 cups Flour
- 1 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 cup Lard 220 g
- 1 lg Egg
- 1 tsp Apple cider vinegar
- 5 tbsp Ice Water
Instructions
Preparing the Pie Filling
- You'll need a medium Dutch oven or large skillet with steep sides to hold all the apples. I used a 10-inch cast-iron skillet.
- In a bowl, whisk together the sugars, flour, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. Set aside.
- Peel the apples, remove cores and slice thin. Place the sliced apples in the skillet over low heat.
- Add the lemon zest and juice, then the sugar/flour mixture. Fold together until well-blended with the apples.
- Cook the apples on low heat, covered, for 20 -25 minutes, stirring every 3 minutes or so to prevent scorching. Taste after 20 minutes to see if the apples are done to your liking - if not, cook a little more.
- Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Transfer to a large bowl and let cool completely in the fridge.
Preparing the Pie Crust Dough
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder. Add the lard and mix together with your fingers or pastry cutter (I use an old-fashioned potato masher) until the mixture is the texture of wet sand.
- In a small bowl, lightly whisk the egg, vinegar and water. Add the liquid to your flour mixture and combine with your hands just until it comes together into a ball. Do not knead!
- Cut the dough ball in half and wrap each piece in plastic wrap and flatten to a disk. Refrigerate for an hour or so.
Preparing the Crumble
- In a bowl, whisk together the flour, sugars and salt. Set aside.
- Melt the butter in the microwave and pour over the flour/sugar mixture. Mix until combined and then cool in the fridge.
To Assemble
- The crust recipe will make 2 deep-dish crusts, or 3 regular crusts, so have the pie pans available. I use glass pyrex dishes.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out the cold dough until you get a surface that's smooth and roughly the size of your pie plate. Roll the dough on to your roller (with a little help from a bench scraper, if necessary), and then unroll over your pie plate. Trim the edges and pinch against the top of the pie plate. Place the formed shells in the fridge while you preheat the oven.
- Place two foil-lined baking sheets in the oven and preheat to 425° F. Check with an oven thermometer to make sure it's reached the proper temp.
- Remove the crumble from the fridge and break apart with a fork until it's no larger than pea-size bits.
- Remove the pie shells and the filling from the fridge. Divide the filling evenly between the two or three pie shells (depending on the size you're using).
- Put the pies on the heated baking sheets and blast bake at 425° F for 15 minutes. After that, turn down the heat to 350° F for another 45 minutes.
- Check your pies to see if the edges are browning too fast. To prevent that, place a pie shield on top of the pie.
- At one hour check your pies - the edges should be golden brown with some caramel oozing up the edges (hence the baking sheets). The crumble should be a bit browned in the middle.
- Remove the pies and cool on a wire rack for a good 3 hours. If you cut into them while hot, they will run, and you will seriously burn your mouth - hot caramel is much hotter than boiling water!