Flat Apple Pie

‘Ello (insert British accent here),

I wanted to share a recipe with you today from this cookbook: 

As some of you know, I am addicted to this woman’s website, http://thepioneerwoman.com/, and this is the cookbook that started the addiction. My wonderful Grandma gave it to me (Hi, Grandma! See you tonight!) not knowing that it would start an unhealthy addiction to her website. You should go there and check it out and then you can be addicted too and I won’t feel all alone in the world.

Anyway, one of the recipes in the cookbook is for flat apple pie. I have been wanting to try it for a while now but just needed an excuse. “I need to for my blog!” was good enough of an excuse for me and JD was at church and I was all alone. So here is the recipe with pictures along the way…

Flat Apple Pie (Makes 2 pies)


• 5 peeled and sliced Granny Smith apples
• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• Juice of ½ a lemon
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 recipe Perfect Pie Crust (this makes 2 crusts)
• 6 tablespoons ( ½ stick) butter

Preheat your oven to 375° F.

In a large bowl, mix together apple slices, flour, lemon juice, both sugars, and salt.

Now we are going to roll out our pie crusts, but I have a little trick to show you! I don’t have a good place to roll out pie crusts in my kitchen because I have zero counter space, so I have to use a big wooden cutting board. It is kind of hard to keep dough from sticking to it while I am rolling it out, so I learned a new trick! 

If you cover your cutting board (or counter top) with a dish cloth and then sprinkle with flour the dough won’t stick and will be easy to pick up and transport to whatever you are cooking it on. Pretty awesome, huh? But, that’s not all! I also have a sock for my rolling pin that keeps the dough from sticking to it. I got it at Sister’s Country Store in San Saba, but I bet you can find them other places too. It looks like this:

And it is so stinkin’ handy! You just sprinkle some flour on it and then roll away. The dough doesn’t stick to your rolling pin now either. You’re welcome and I love you, too.

Ok, so roll your dough out.

And then place it on your cooking sheet. *NOTE: This is a very crucial step in the recipe- move the crust before you put the apples on it.*

And then put half of the apple mixture on the middle of the crust.

Be sure to use a cooking sheet with a lip on it, there are some juices that come out of this thing that would make one heck of a mess if they got baked to the bottom of your oven.

Here is the point in the recipe where I learned a few things, and I would like to share them with you so that you may learn from my experience (read: mistakes).

See all this juice that came with the apples that I dumped onto the crust?

I wasn’t sure when I was doing this if the juice was a good thing or not, so I left it in there to see what happened. Well, it leaked out- that’s what happened. I think that when I make this recipe again I will spoon the apples onto the crust instead of dumping. I don’t know if it will be better that way or not, but I do know that it won’t make such a mess and I am all about less of a mess.

Ok, so now you start folding the edges of the crust over the apples about 2-3 inches.

(See all that juice back there just looking for a way out, well it found it.)

And do that all the way around.

Ta-dah!

Isn’t she lovely... Isn't she wonderful... Isn't she precious… Less than one minute old…

Sorry.
Repeat this step just like the first time for the second pie crust.
This is where I have a confession.
In my excitement about getting these bad dudes in the oven, I forgot to move the second crust onto the cooking sheet before I put the apples in.

The super-gooey, oh-so-juicy, apples. Not good.

I thought about telling you lovely people that I did this on purpose to show you what not to do, to show you what happens if you mess this up. But I decided not to start telling you lies every time I screwed up a recipe because I don’t want to have to lie to you every time I cook something! That being said, here is the before picture of what the second lovely pie looked like before I tried to move it.

Isn’t she lovely…

Enough of that already. So once I realized my mistake, I beat my head against the counter and whined to our cat, and then I attempted the move from towel to sheet. And this is how it turned out after major reconstructive surgery.

Ha ha ha! That is awful! What I ended up having to do after I tried to move the whole thing was pick out all the apples by hand, dump as much juice as possible off of the baking sheet into the bowl, mush the crust back together with my fingers, and then put the apples back on and fold up the sides. It was ri-di-cu-lous! Ah. So frustrating. Here is a side by side of my lovely daughter and the ugly step-sister:

Next you chunk up the ½ stick of butter and dot the tops of the pies and then throw them in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.

I know exactly what you are thinking right now, “Michelle, your husband is gone, you have no children, what did you do with yourself for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown?”
Well, I will tell you my friends:

• Washed dishes
• Picked okra from our garden
• Thought about children
• Ran through dialog in my head of what I would type to you people
• Walked across the road to the Bolivar Store to buy some Shiner for my husband
• Met Pat, he’s nice
• Thought about children
• Checked the pies like 5 times
• Banged my head against the counter some more for the pie mistake
• Thought about children

And then the pies were ready!

See all that nasty black stuff? That would be the escaped juice that I get to scrub now. yay. Luckily I cooked them on cooking sheets with edges otherwise I would be scrubbing the bottom of the oven right now—or fanning the smoke detector.

But instead of scrubbing dishes I decided to eat a piece of flat apple pie for dinner and the dishes are still sitting there. It was pretty good. I think that next time I would do it in a regular pie shell just to make life easier, or I might try this way again without all the juice. Either way, this tasted delicious! I recommend giving it a whirl! Have fun and let me know how it goes!

Scrubbing dishes,
Michelle