Paula Deen's Crunch Top Apple Pie, Y'all

Paula Deen's Crunch Top Apple Pie

Paula Deen makes a mean apple pie, y'all.

And by "mean", I mean scrumptious.

On Sunday I made her Crunch Top Apple Pie currently featured on Food Network's home page and I enjoyed it for 3 days straight. Why just yesterday morning, I went to the fridge to see what I could have for breakfast and there it was... a piece that I had sliced and only eaten half of. So, I just picked it up and ate it while standing right there. It was even great ice cold. I did stop short of picking up the milk container and drinking straight from the carton, though... or at least that's the story I'm sticking to.


Paula suggests using whatever crust you prefer - whether store bought or made yourself. I opted to use this double pie crust recipe by Lapadia. Since Lapadia's Himalayan Blackberry Pie is a Food 52 Editor's Pick and will be in the next edition of the cookbook, Amanda and Merrill even created a slide show to show how they made it. This pie crust was not only simple to make using my food processor, but it was flaky, delicious and easy to work with, even with my unskilled-at-crust-making hands.

The crunch topping was great even though I felt mine wasn't as crumbly as I thought it should be.
Also, you may notice that I only weaved the lattice once or twice then gave up and just laid the strips across ;-)

Here's Lapadia's recipe for a 10-inch double pie crust:

Double Pie Crust (10 inch)

Adapted from Lapadia

Special equipment: food processor

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), cubed and chilled

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

8-10 Tablespoons cold water

Place butter, flour and salt in food processor and pulse lightly until the mixture starts to resemble wet looking sand.

Next add the cold water 1 Tablespoon at a time, pulsing in between, and keep adding water and pulsing until dough just starts to come together. It took 8 Tablespoons for me.

dough has started to come together

Remove dough from food processor and split in half. Pat each into a small disk and place in plastic wrap or plastic bags and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. While your dough is chilling, you can proceed to make your filling.

put disks of dough in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes

After 3o minutes, remove disks from refrigerator. Place the first disk on a floured surface and roll out until it is large enough to fit your pie plate. Fit to your pie plate and trim edges. Roll out other disk, then cut into long strips that you will use to form a lattice pattern across the top of your pie.


Please note, the recipe I chose for my crust happened to be for a 10-inch size pie, but Paula's recipe is for a 9-inch pie, so you'll have a little dough left over. Never a bad thing in my book. I like to sprinkle a little sugar on the dough scraps and bake them at the same time as the pie for a little extra treat.

Crunch Top Apple Pie (9 inch)

Adapted from Paula Deen

Oven 425 degrees F


Filling:
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
dash salt
3 1/2 cups peeled, sliced cooking apples (I used 3 Granny Smith and 2 Fuji apples)
1 (16 ounce) jar applesauce
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
2 Tablespoons butter, chopped into small pieces

In large bowl mix sugar, flour, cinnamon, and salt. Next stir in apple slices, applesauce, and lemon juice.

apple pie filling

Spoon apple mixture into dough lined pie plate and dot with pieces of butter.

Arrange strips of dough on top of pie in a lattice pattern (weaved), or just lay them across each other.

Crunch Topping:

Adapted from Paula Deen

Ingredients:

3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon sugar

dash salt

1 Tablespoon butter, at room temperature

Mix all topping ingredients together using a fork until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle mixture evenly across top of pie.

Bake for 10 minutes at 425 degrees F.

Next reduce oven heat to 350 degrees F and continue to bake for 45 minutes or until crust and topping are golden brown.

For some reason it took 85 minutes for my crust to properly brown. I kept checking it at 5 minute intervals but didn't want to remove it until my crust was brown. The pie came out fantastic despite taking much longer than planned.

When pie has cooled, serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or serve cold straight from the refrigerator with a big "glass" of ice cold milk.

Look at that buttery, flaky crust! Topped with vanilla ice cream, this pie was soooo good!