Ooh la la, apple pie

That's right, there are four apple pies in that picture. Let's just say that I was a little busy last Sunday afternoon! Thankfully Noel peeled all the apples for me, so I just had to slice them, and make the crusts, and make the caramel/glaze. It also makes me happy that I was able to use up most of the apples (and in the nick of time too). Sadly I let the pears wait too long...they started making some sort of fermented pear liquid on the floor of the pantry, so I had to throw them away. (And then two days later at Fry's I overheard two women talking about how fantastically sweet and juicy the Asian pears they got at Apple Annie's were! Argh!) But enough about that failure, back to the deliciousness of the apple pies!

I used a recipe I found on allrecipes.com last year called "Grandma Ople's Apple Pie" (variation of Opal? but I think Opie is funnier) which I adapted to suit my purposes. You make the pie crust, slice the apples, mound the the apples in the crust, and then pour a rich, buttery, sugary caramel over the apples, top with another crust, and brush that crust with a little of the caramel as a glaze. The original recipe called for doing a lattice-crust over the apples, and then just pouring the glaze over the whole thing, but the crust is usually my favorite part of the pie, so I did a whole top crust.

The end result is crazily sweet and deliciously appley. The crust is soft and flaky just under the surface, and then crispy and sugary right on the top where the glaze has baked on. The Apple Annie's apples were perfect, they held up to the heat, and became tender but not mushy.

My one caveat is that I actually wouldn't recommend trying to make four pies at once using this method. The caramel thickens really fast, which means that you need an extra person to keep stirring it while you're putting on the top crusts, and in the rush to get everything done at the same time I ended up burning Noel with the caramel. (Sad face) So I'd only use this to make one or two pies at a time in the future.

But we took the hot apple pies and delivered one to our neighbors, one to our pastor, and one to the elementary director from church, and still had one warm apple pie left for us at home. With a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream this is a la mode gloriousness!

Jessica's version of Grandma 'Opie's' Pie

2 nine-inch prepared pie crusts

1/2 cup unsalted butter

3 tbsp flour

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla

5-6 granny smith, or other tart apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into 1/4 inch segments

Roll out the pie crusts, press one crust in a nine inch pie tin, chill for about fifteen minutes. Then chill the other one while preparing the apples and caramel. Once the apples are all peeled, cored, and sliced, pile the apples fairly evenly in the prepared pie crust.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. In a medium saucepan melt the butter over low heat. Whisk in the flour to form a paste, stir in the water to thin it back out, and then stir in the sugars, spices, and vanilla. Keep stirring constantly, this thickens up quickly. Pour almost all of the caramel over the apples in the pie pan, reserving a few tablespoons to brush over the top. At this point it's helpful to have someone else stir the caramel, unless you're super-coordinated, which I am most definitely not.

Place the second crust over the apples and caramel, crimp the edges of the two crusts together, and cut slits in the top, in a decorative pattern if you're so inclined. Then brush the remaining caramel over the main part of the pie, don't worry about the crimped edges, it makes a nice contrast actually if they're not coated with the glaze.

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake an additional 30-40 minutes or until the non-glazed crust is golden brown, and the apples seem soft. (I poked a toothpick in through the slits in the crust to check this, and mine were perfect at just about 32 minutes).