Mom’s Apple Pie
I admit this is a misnomer. It’s really not mom’s apple pie, at least not my mom. My mom was not a baker. In fact, I cannot remember a single baked good made by her…nada, zilch. That’s not to say we didn’t have desserts or baked goods, they just happen to come from a bakery or restaurant or somewhere else, just not our kitchen. There were plenty of bakeries in the city and in Chinatown. My parent’s after-work excursions for dinner ingredients often included a sweet treat from one of the Chinatown bakeries.
We snacked on almond cookies from Eastern Bakery. Swooned over the best damn sugar doughnuts in town (providing you ate them in the first 5 minutes after they were made) from Sun Wah Kue. Hiked up the hill to the Fortune Cookie Factory. For special occasions, we walked over to Victoria’s Bakery in North Beach, a stone’s throw away from Chinatown, and picked up a St. Honore. Imagine a cake with layers of rum-laced pastry cream, covered with billows of whipped cream, and then wait for it…little cream puffs perched around the edge. My mom’s absolute favorite cake.
Our favorite desserts came from a deli-restaurant we went to all the time, Ping Yuen Bakery Cafe. Their Apple Pie was an American-Chinese mash-up. Strictly sweet apples layered in a crust made with lard and painted with an egg wash that gave it a crackly pattern on top. This was the apple pie of my childhood.
All About the Pie
Whoops, lost in nostalgia. My first attempt at pie-making was an apple pie and it remains my favorite pie to make. The crust is made with butter and a little bit of shortening, double F-bombs, flavor, and flaky (gotcha). My current fav is Dorie Greenspan’s crust which you can find here. For the filling, I have opted for mace instead of nutmeg, substituted brown sugar for some of the granulated sugar (caramel overtones), and added a squeeze of lemon (cuts the sweetness). You could call this my lifelong project-perfect pie. When apple season rolls around I head to my favorite purveyor of apples Prevedelli Farm. My favorites include Mutsu, Jonagolds, Pippens and Granny Smiths. I combine 2 or 3 different varieties of apples to hit sweet, tart, crisp, and soft all in one bite. Experiment, that’s my mantra.
This is a good old-fashioned all-American apple pie, packed with apples, a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg surrounded by a flaky, buttery crust! YUM. Now go make one!
Mom’s Apple Pie
Ingredients
My current favorite pie crust recipe is from Dorie Greenspan. It makes a generous amount of dough so you will have excess that you can use for hand pies or small pie.
- Pastry for 9 inch Two-Crust Pie
- 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar + 1/4 c dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour*
- 1/2 teaspoon ground mace
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Dash of salt
- 6 cups thinly sliced pared tart apples about 6 medium
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon KA Boiled Cider (secret apple booster) optional
Instructions
- Prepare pie crust. Place in fridge to chill while making filling.
- Heat oven to 425 degrees.
- Mix sugar, flour, mace, cinnamon and salt.
- Stir in apples. Turn into pastry-lined pie plate; dot with butter.
- Cover with top crust that has slits cut in it; seal and flute.
- Make a 3 inch aluminum foil ring. Set aside to use if crust browns too much
- Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 375 degrees, bake until crust is golden brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust, 40 to 50 minutes. Cover edge with ring if necessary.