For some reason I had over 20 apples in the vegetable drawer of my refrigerator. I like apples a lot, but there’s no reason to have that many taking up valuable room in the fridge, especially now that I have a bounty of fresh veggies delivered to me each week. So, I decided to make my family’s apple pie recipe for Easter.
Technically, the recipe comes from an old cookbook called, the Mennonite Community Cookbook, which my dad’s family gave to my mom when she first came to this country. This was the first cookbook I learned to use, even though we’ve only actually cooked a couple recipes out of the book. Anyway, here’s our adapted version of the Apple Crumb Pie.
Apple Crumb Pie (a.k.a. the Ryan Apple Pie)
6 apples (preferably tart, but I tend to use whatever I have on hand)
1 cup sugar (Turbinado or regular)
1/3 cup organic sweet cream butter (very cold and cut into cubes)
3/4 cup organic whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon
Pastry for one 9 inch shell (I am unable to make a nice, flaky pie shell, so I buy the Marie Calendar’s shells from the freezer section and always end up making two pies at a time.)
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Pare apples and cut into eighths, put in a medium sized bowl. Sprinkle 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon over apples and mix until well coated. Put apple mix into unbaked pastry shell.
Combine remaining sugar and flour into a mini food prep or large food processor. Pulse until well mixed. Next, add cubes of cold butter and pulse until crumbs are formed. Sprinkle crumbs over apples.
Bake the pie at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, and then reduce temp to 350 degrees. Bake for 35-60 minutes, depending on how done you like your apples. We like them nice and soft, so we bake the pie for 60 minutes.
Let it cool for a few hours, then slice and serve. Eat at room temperature or reheat it. Eat it a la carte, serve with ice cream or whipped cream, or put the pie in a bowl and pour milk over it and eat it like cereal (this is what my dad likes to do for breakfast when we have leftover pie).
Enjoy!
FRE
(P.S. For some reason I don’t know how to use my camera and there are date stamps on my pictures with the incorrect date! Luckily I figured how to fix it, but of course by then the apple pie was made and gobbled up. Lame.)
Photograph by Amy Albertson
