Apple pie

It is apple pie season!! I love apple pie! It's one of the few fruit based desserts I live for (carrot cake? Come on seriously, who are you kidding? Carrots don't belong in cake!). Furthermore, for the past few weeks, there have been around 75 apples in a bag in my kitchen.  Nick, Excalibur, and I went apple picking a couple weekends ago and have been slowly making it through these apples.  Don't worry, recipes for apple pie pancakes and apple pie French toast will follow.  I've been rather negligent in my blog posting lately.  I've been doing the cooking, just not the posting.  

Anyway, Nick's great aunt was turning 90 so we decided to bake an apple pie for the party.  It got great reviews.  I'm always a little nervous that I've over spiced it because I prefer more spices and less sugar but others like it sweet.  I guess I finally found the balance!

Amazingly delicious apple pie 

Yield: 1 party-pleasing pie 

6-7 baking apples, peeled and diced 

3 TB flour 

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup sugar (or 1/4 cup Splenda or truvia baking  blend)

2 TB lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

A pinch ground cloves (unless you have an 1/8 teaspoon measure)

2 pie crusts (I used pillsbury, sure homemade is better but I was lazy...)

~2 TB butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

Extra cinnamon  and sugar to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven to 375F.  Mix flour, vanilla, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves in a large bowl.  Slowly add apples to mixture, evenly coating apples.  Use one pie crust to line bottom of pie dish.  Add apple mixture to dish.  Dice butter and dot the top of the pie with the pieces evenly.  Using a pizza cutter, cut strips of the other pie crust to form a lattice on top of pie.  Using a basting brush, coat the lattice with the beaten egg.  Finally, sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top (To make cinnamon sugar, mix 2 TB white sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon).  Bake for 50-60 minutes.

I messed up the crust a little bit so it looks a little lopsided but it tasted phenomenal! We even put some Ben and Jerry's vanilla blueberry graham cracker Greek frozen yogurt on top! It was heaven!