Apple Pie | Recipes

Apple Pie

A tasty apple-crumble-style pie. The benefit of this recipe is that absolutely no other tools are required. Everything is prepared by hand.

Ingredients

Cut the butter into small cubes or rectangles for easier dough preparation later on. Leave the butter out for a few hours so that warms up prior to making the dough. Also, leave a small amount of butter for later to grease the pie dish with.
Leave 3 eggs out so that they are at room temperature. Alternatively, to save time, you can fill a bowl with warm water, and take the eggs directly from the fridge and leave them in the bowl for 5-10 minutes. This is usually sufficient to warm them up.

Peel all of the apples.
Grate the apples into thin strips.
Set them aside in a pot, making sure to cover the lid to slow down oxidation.
(Optional). Add a small amount of butter and water to the pot, and simmer the apples for 5-10 minutes until they are soft. I usually do not do this to save time, and as a personal preference, but feel free to experiment. You can optionally add cinnamon in this step.

Sift all of the flour into a mixing bowl (optional). You can also just use the flour as-is.
Add all of the sugar, butter, baking powder, and salt into the mixing bowl with the flour.
Mix by hand until no more clumps of butter remain and the dough is more-or-less of an even consistency. Don’t take too long!
After mixing, add the eggs, and mix by and again until the dough is once again of an even consistency. It should clump up a little, but be loose and a little like sand in that it should not form a solid mass, but be easy to separate.
The dough is now ready.

Begin preheating the oven to 180 °C.
Grease the pie dish with butter on the base and on the sides.
By hand, form the base of the pie by adding a layer of dough to the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle some dough, and press down by hand until the base is formed.
Once the base is formed, add more dough to the sides to form the borders of the pie. You can make them as high or low as you prefer, making sure to leave enough dough for the top.
Once the borders are done, spread the grated apples on the base of the pie with a spoon or other utensil. You need not use all of the apples in this step, it depends how much filling you want.
Once the filling is placed, sprinkle the rest of the dough over the top, making sure to cover the apples completely. You do not need to press the down in this step, leave the top layer loose.
Bake for 30-35 minutes. The top should be a golden brown. The time will of course depend on your oven. For my oven, I usually bake for 35 minutes.
After baking, use a wooden skewer to test the dough for preparedness. Poke near middle of the pie all the way to the base. There should be little to no dough stuck to the skewer. If you see some dough, bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until the dough is no longer raw.
Enjoy!

Experiment with the amount of sugar. If the cake it too sweet, or not sweet enough for your tastes, feel free to reduce or add sugar.

This recipe was adapted from the following video: