Sheer Determination and a Dutch Apple Pie

I saw this Dutch Apple Pie post on the Delicious Dishings blog. It looked absolutely amazing. Pie crust, filled with apple chunks cooked in butter, cinnamon and sugar, smothered in a cream sauce and finished off with crispy streusel topping. I couldn't find the Cook's Illustrated Fall Entertaining issue that contains the recipe (dang!) so I decided to improvise, using the information Megan provided on her site and some bits and bobs from other recipes. It sounds like I'm just being a lazy cheapskate but really I looked at this as a good opportunity to put my culinary skills to the test and learn to build recipes using basic knowledge and my own intuition!

Ingredients:

4 Granny Smith apples
(peeled, cored and chopped)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons of butter
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

Spritz of lemon juice

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped cold butter

Mrs. Smith Frozen Pie Crust (thawed)

1/2 cup heavy cream
leftover juice from cooking apples

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Poke a few holes in your frozen (now thawed) pie crust and par-bake it in the oven for about 5-7 minutes. Take out of oven and set aside.

Chop your apples!


Sautee apples, butter, cinnamon, sugar and lemon juice over medium heat until the apples soften.

While the apples are cooking, prepare your streusel. Combine flour and brown sugar in a bowl and slowly incorporate chopped cold butter. I think it's best to add the chopped butter in small batches and dust them with the flour so they don't stick together in big clumps.

Mix the butter, flour and brown sugar with your hands, squeezing as you go along. You still want globs of butter but you want everything to be well incorporated. Set aside mixture (preferably in the fridge so your butter doesn't start melting on you).

Once your apples are cooked, transfer them (juice and all) to another bowl, preferably a mixing bowl with a slight spout. Then drain the juice from the apple mixture into the pan you had cooked them in. Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream to the pan and cook the juice & cream until thick. This takes a while and I was impatient so mine didn't really form into a sauce.

Add cooked apples to your pie crust.

Then smother the apples with the cream sauce.

Finally, add your streusel topping. Cook in the oven at 425 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. What I did was cook it for 15 minutes at 425, then I lowered it to 325 because my pie crust was getting to dark. Again, I'm trying to figure out how to do this. Possibly try cooking at 375 or 400 degrees for a longer period of time. Really you just want the streusel on top to cook.

Here is your lovely pie!

It's so decadent that it seems wrong to put some ice cream on top, but I did it anyways. This pie is absolutely amazing and I hope you'll try it yourself.