This first post is a bit awkward for me. Here I am typing and erasing sentences, completely unable to come up with a witty introduction. It feels almost as if I’m squeezing into a stiff new pair of blue jeans- it just feels strange until broken in. So, let’s start simple shall we?
Hi! I’m the Denver Emily! Hey Em, don’t you think we should work out a few nicknames? And in that case, I’m opening this challenge up to any of you readers out there: how can we two Emilys differentiate ourselves electronically?
Radiating excitement (with a side of silly)!
Anyways, I’m very excited to share with you our first cooking mission: Apple Pie. The quintessential American dessert! A cornerstone to celebrations. What better way to kick start the birth of Batter and Chatter than to serve up a generous slice of warm, spiced apples sandwiched between two layers of crispy, buttery crust… In fact, I’m wiping crumbs off of my key board as we speak!
Apple pie. It’s a relatively “classic” pie variety, however, I found picking THE apple pie recipe to be more difficult than the baking. As I typically do, I started with my cookbook collection but quickly bored of it. Grabbing my computer, I googled “Best Apple Pie Recipe in America” and it turned out some billions of hits with the following top rank list:
#1 and #2. “All recipes”; #3. “Epicurious”; #4. “Country Living” Blah blah blah.
But all of these top hit recipes were missing something…. and then it hit me. Butter. They weren’t using enough butter (seriously, who cooks with shortening anymore)? I quickly typed in “Paula Dean”, you know the wide-eyed-crazy-haired queen of butter. That lead me to the Food Network website where I pinpointed the perfect recipe (posted below). The reviews tallied 73 with a whopping average rating of 5/5 stars. Plus, no shortening. Butter me up, baby!
A perfect pie starts with a perfect crust. As you will soon find out, I’m sure, baking doesn’t usually turn out well for me. I swear, I measure every ingredient out to the T and my cupcakes turns out flat, bread burned, crust dry, you name it. But if 73 other people could make this recipe and rate it 5 stars, they must have turned out some pretty amazing crust. I was determined to be number 74.
Crust beginnings
Let’s meet the ingredients of my crust: Flour, sugar, salt, egg. And butter.
It’s a love story really. Flour, meet salt and sugar. Butter, meet flour mixture. My hands were little cupids, churning the cold butter into the flour until it made a grainy mixture. Then, egg, meet fork and water. Egg mixture, meet buttery flour mixture…. and tah dah! A baby crust is born, named Dough.
Flour. Salt. Sugar.
Plus butter (from Wisconsin, YAY)!
Attack of the butter-mixing fingers!
Adding the egg mixture
Wrap and chill
Into the refrigerator goes the dough and onto the next mess: the apple filling. Apples are so in season, even trendy, however I didn’t have time to skip through any orchards. I did what was “American” and grabbed the cheapest bag of baking apples at my local grocery store. Convenience and value. That’s the America way for this very American pie right? Seriously, I would totally spend an afternoon picking apples. In fact, I’m already guilty…
Fun at the Orchards
… unfortunately, the last apple was eaten just days before this apple pie idea materialized.
Filling beginnings
Apple pie filling: Granny Smiths, And more butter!
Hey Em? How did you manage to peel all of your apples? I found it to be bearable, almost theraputic, to listen to political disputes on NPR as I sliced, cut and cored my way though three pounds of my fruity green tarts. Once they were stripped to bare, thin slices, my apples were bathed in lemon juice and then coated with sugar.
Peel peel peel peeeeelllllllllll
Ascorbic acid bath
Sugar coating
About 45 minutes and 10 tired fingers later… my kitchen was perfumed with simmering butter as I prepared the frying pan to cook my apple slices.
More butter...
Softening the tarts
After a brief softening in the hot butter, their juices were drained and collected, only to return to the frying pan to reduce into a decadent syrup. Then the apples and their syrup were combined in a large bowl and adorned with a few pinches of cinnamon and nutmeg. As I liked the syrupy pans clean, the apples joined the crust in the refrigerator.
Spiced apple filling
The rest of my pie making experience went fairly smoothly. The crust wasn’t too dry or too wet. It rolled out nicely without sticking all over my countertop or messing up my roller. There was juussssst enough dough to cover the bottom of the pie dish, save enough for its matching lid. My oven didn’t smoke when it preheated (a mysterious recurring problem). I even resisted the temptation to snack on the marinating apple pie slices!
Dough meiosis
Let 'er roll!
Assembling the puzzle pieces
After dumping the apples into the crusted pan, sealing the dough lid with egg and more finger power, and brushing egg all over the top, my pie was looking pretty pie-tastic. I slapped it into the oven, set my timer, and waited (impatiently) for my pie to mature.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
Holy cow! I was time to open the oven’s doors and realize my pie’s fate. I hope it didn’t get sick. My pies sometimes vomit their sweet stomach contents all over (hence the mysterious smoking I suppose), or they come out blushing with dark, burned edges. To my delight, my pie came out quite normal. No. It was beautiful!! I snapped a proud portrait, and if I had an unscreened window sill I would have set it there for all the world to see. A glorious apple pie!!
Close up
Apple Pie-fection
I waited exactly 32 minutes before grabbing a knife and fork. Emily, I saved piece for you, of course! Let us raise our forks and cheers to the beginning of a long friendship here at Batter and Chatter!
Tootles,
Denver
P.S. This Apple Pie recipe can be found here
Apple Pie with Em Hi!
Hi there! I’m Emily (too!). For our first big dish, “Denver Em” picked apple pie…what a great choice for a fall treat!
YAY! Our first post! Em, I have to credit you in picking apple pie for our first creation. Although I like to eat it, I’ve never made it. I tell people this, but I consider myself a “pie-snob”, because I’ve had the luxury of eating some dang good pie over the years, thanks to my best friend Meredith. Her family are all pie-baking extraordinaires, winning award after awards at the state fair. Its a pretty sweet friendship, even excluding the pie 🙂 I was unsure on what apples to choose, so I called up Mere’s mom (the queen of pie making!). She suggested golden delicious or wellington. I found golden delicious at the farmers market, so decided upon those! I peeled the apples using my potato peeler and cut them into 1/2 inch(roughly) pieces.
I used a hybrid of a few recipes, but mainly was banking on this one i found from my homegirl, Rachael Ray! Someday Em, when she retires, hopefully they will give us her spot on the air for our own show. 🙂 I used the same crust recipe as the Rachael Ray recipe, because it seemed relatively simple. I’ve heard that the trick to a great pie crust is using lard, but I had already been to the grocery store twice on pie day (does this happen to anyone else?! please say yes!) and decided butter would have to do. I love butter, and this recipe used a good amount, so i was all for it!
Pie crusts are so basic, yet sooo yummy. For this pie crust recipe, click here. I used my hand to crumble and mix the butter in, which was pretty easy. When I rolled the dough into a ball, it was a little crumbly, but a good consistency- not too gooey and not too dry!
For the filling I improvised on the recipe and used 6-7 golden delicious apples (medium-large sized), 1 /4 cup each of sugar, brown sugar, and flour, along with the other fillings (which I used the recommended amount from the original recipe). I mixed them all together and dumped them in the crust.
I then rolled out the rest of the pie dough, according to the recipe, and gave my pie a lid. I folded over the edges from the bottom and sealed them with my thumb and forefinger, trying to create a good lookin’ crust (sooo much easier said than done). Em, do you do anything special for your crust?
All ready for the oven! I topped off my best shot at a delcious dessert with a little more cinnamon, cut a few slits, and let the oven do work. Completed! I had a little bit of a bubble over, so next time, I would maybe use 1/4-1/2 cup less apples.
After admiring my rookie pie, and devouring it ala mode, I found myself praising one especially good helper. One of the best investments in baking and a tool that made this pie crust so much easier to handle was parchment paper! I use it for baking all of the time (cookies, pizza, etc). It helps keep my pans clean and me from spending more time trying to scrape them clean! It was super helpful for rolling out the pie crust. Just lightly flour, roll out dough, and then pick up the entire sheet of parchment, with crust, and flip it onto the pie shell…no messy pulling off the dough from a flour covered countertop and holey crusts from accidental stretching during moving. A lifesaver.
And that’s it for my take on apple pie! Happy first recipe post to batter and chatter…I couldn’t imagine being on this journey of food and friendship with anyone else, Em!
Batter and Chatter 