OT Need apple pie assistance, please

I always end up with a high dome on my apple pie crust that collapses when the pie is cut. Here's how it happens:

I peel and slice my apples nice and thin. I mix in the sugar and seasonings, etc. and pile the apple mixture high in the pie pan- on top of a bottom crust, of course. Then I add the top crust, seal the edges, brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle some sugar on top and cut some slits for the steam to escape- and I make sure the slits are not blocked.

When I put that top crust on the pile of apples it lays on the 'piled high' apple slices. Are ya with me here? Then, as the apples cook, the pile of apples gets flatter and flatter, BUT the crust stays high! It's all rounded and pretty, but then you cut into the pie and it's a mess of busted up crust.

How do you get the top crust to follow the apples as they bake and get soft and compact??? Do I have to lay the apple slices in the pie pan one at a time and stack them perfectly flat? I'd really like to take a pretty apple pie to my family Christmas dinner..... for a change. HELP!

Leslie, Missy & The Furbabies in MO.

Reply to
Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.
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I wouldn't pile them so high in the center. SOrry, but that's just me. DH loves apple pie, so I make it once or twice a year for him - nobody else really likes it for some reason. Anyway, the crust still looks pretty if it isn't all poofed up in the center, so I just spread out the apples...oh, and sometimes I cut pretty designs in the crust.

I have a cookie cutter that is a huge hand, but it came with a small heart as well (supposed to cut the heart out of the center of the hand cookie)/ Anyway, I've cut out hearts before putting on the top crust, then I scatter the cut out hearts around the edges...always looks lovely and doesn't collapse on me.

Larisa

Reply to
offkilterquilter

I asked my wife, culinarian extraordinaire, and she said it might be the type of apples you are using. Some of them cook down faster and lower than others. She says that it does happen even to the best of cooks from time to time. In an aside, there is a place in California, up in the Sonora Gold Country that is an apple orchard that also has a restaurant operation that makes something called "Mile High Apple Pie". We used to go up there about harvest time in the fall, and gorge ourselves on this pie that was at least 6" tall and full up to the top under the crust with freshly cooked apples. I always wondered how they pulled that off. Man, I am salivating, thinking about it right now.

John

Reply to
John

As you know, Leslie, I am by no means a good cook! However, whenever I make apple pie or apple crumble, I always cook the apples slightly before I start. That way a little of the apple 'size-reduction' has already happened before the pastry is put onto it. I quarter/divide into eight my cooking apples, peel and cut out the cores. Then I cut the segments across into three or four chunks according to size. I put them into a casserole dish with some sugar and microwave for about four minutes. They are then soft but still holding their chunky shape. I usually make crumble, but I would do the same for a pie. Don't suppose the family would like crumble? We had one last night, with lots of spice (cinnamon and ground cloves), both on the apples and in the crumble topping. I cook the pie/crumble fairly hot, to cook the pastry - you can forget about the apples, because they will just heat up nicely - about 15 minutes to 20 should do it.

All my recipes say cook the pie from raw apples, but I've never been very successful with that!! I never bother with a glaze, either! I wonder if that acts as a sort of reinforcement to the pastry, preventing it from sinking?

You are a much better cook than I am, so I'm sure it's lovely, but I do understand the disappointment at cutting time! What kind of pastry are you using? I should have asked that before!! . In message , Leslie & The Furbabies in MO. writes

Reply to
Patti

I use my ex- sil's recipe for the crumb topped apple pie. I think it is french apple pie if I remember right. I have been doing that for over

20 years. I'll probably never ever make a regular crust apple pie cause this way is so good. Maybe if you have to have a t> I always end up with a high dome on my apple pie crust that collapses when
Reply to
Taria

Reply to
Estelle Gallagher

Leslie - I recently read this: more apples but cook them a bit first in a pan with some butter until they are beginning to get soft. Then put them in the pie pan, cover with the crust and bake. I imagine that since the apples are already cooked a bit, they will not shrink up as much so the crust won't be hanging in mid-air!

Make sense?

Laurie G. in CA

Reply to
Laurie G.

I don't do the milk and sugar on my top crust. Sometimes an extra sprinkle of cinnamon if I am feeling fancy, but that is about it. I also try to keep the apples level, not heaped. How thin is "nice and thin"? I generally cut my slices somewhere between an 1/8 and 1/4, any thinner and the apples tend to sauce a bit, and that will lose you volume inside the crust. I generally do a standard shortcrust, and it tends to settle somewhat with the apples so the top comes out a bit hilly. I don't consider that a bad thing though I know some folk strive for a smooth magazine picture crust, or a Mrs. Smith's Mountain Top kind of pie. Are you useing a hot water crust? or is it maybe the brushing down with milk that keeps your crust tall? If neither, maybe a tad more shortening might help it settle. I know DH does his crust restaraunt style (he made all the pies when we worked at the cafe) and it stands more than mine. I've always done a scalloped edge on my crusts, and when he tries to put that tall ruffly edge (which he favors) on my pies it tends to droop a bit in the baking. I know I use more shortening than he does, about 1/3 cup to his quarter per cup of flour. He also tends to favor fully or partially cooked fillings over raw.

NightMist go>I always end up with a high dome on my apple pie crust that collapses when

Reply to
NightMist

Thanks, NightMist. I slice the apples about the same as you. But I am a wimp... I cannot make a pie crust to save my soul! I can make wonderful cookies, delicious cakes, great breads- both quick and yeast- and fantastic cinnamon rolls and just about any candy. But pie crusts... no way! And I've tried prolly fifty different recipes and techniques over the years and my mom has tried to teach me her wonderful flaky crust method. So I use Pillsbury Ready Crusts. My family knows my shortcoming and accepts that they will always have store bought crusts with homemade filling. They'll happily settle for that after choking down my 'experiments' over the years.

I have used Granny Smith apples, Delicious (ugh!), Fuji, and Gala at different times to see if that made a difference. I'm using Romes today.

Hope your poor ear gets better soon. I'm battling another UTI right now (I have chronic kidney failure so I have them often)- darn infections of any kind are total misery! I can sympathize!

Have you stopped bouncing off the walls yet? Is more money still dribbling in? VBG

Leslie, Missy & The Furbabies in MO.

Reply to
Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

Here's a pretty good link for what apples do what for cooking.

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Those Romes are going to "sauce" a bit and shrink down so I'd cut them a might thicker and pre cook them a little. I stack my pies a "mile high", people would revolt if I served them a flat thin piece of pie. I also "milk and sugar" my crusts. I like the way they shine and sparkle ;) I put a wad of butter in my big, deep chicken frying pan, toss in the apples with the sugar and spices and a heaping tablespoon of Minute Tapioca (no flour or cornstarch) for thickener, gently stir them a few minutes while they heat up and then put the lid on and let it simmer for about 5 minutes then PILE them into the pie plate (crust is already there). I never chill my pie crusts either when I make them and they are always light and flakey. I know, I'm Martha's nightmare ~snort~ The crust usually has a just a little space between it and the apples after baking and the fruit is a good 4 or more inches deep, just the way we like it! Anything less is a just an apple tart in my book.

Another thing I do to make my pie extra special is to mix in about a heaping cup of grated cheddar in the pastry dough I use for apple pies. Yum! This little trick has won me two blue ribbons. This probably wouldn't work with pre made crusts.

Val

Reply to
Val

I precook my apples also Patti. Works great!

Reply to
Boca Jan

Try this: toss your apple slices in a dutch oven and heat them to an internal temperature of at least 120oF, but no more than 140oF. This mild heating stabilizes the pectin in the apples. Then you can put them in the crust, put the top crust on and bake per usual.

With some varieties of apples, you'll get a lot of juice collecting in the dutch oven. I save that, boil it down to syrup, and pour the much-reduced juice over the apples before putting on the top crust.

Alternatively, a pretty pie can be made by blind-baking a bottom crust, filling it with precooked apple filling, and then topping it with a little strusel. Run it under the broiler to brown the struesel. Or top with prebaked cutouts of pie dough scraps.

Kay, in apple country

Reply to
Kay Lancaster

Well some folk just don't have a hand for pastry. That is all there is to it. My crusts come out OK, but I doubt they would win any pizes. My mom, who labors under a cooking curse, makes pie crust that makes shirt cardboard look positively appetizing. I would lay odds you are likely miles ahead of that! (G)

One of the reasons so many people like the granny's for baking is because they stay firm so well. A gala nearly goes to porridge in some goodies. Though galas have surprised me in apple dumplings. I think it is because I use a butter crust for those, and that bakes up faster and they don't have time to soften so. They go mighty well with that butter crust too.

Just when I think it is getting better I wake up with an ear full of goo. I have to bully them into giving me antibiotics up to the clinic, I am allergic to two and thus they fret. I just wanted to slap the ears, nose, and throat doctor they sent me to. I told her straight out that I had finished a 10 day course of antibiotics just a few days before I saw her, and that it had almost but not quite knocked it back. So she looks in my ears and makes a diagnosis of eczema. By gosh a first year intern caught out making that mistake would blush! (your standard swimmers ear sort of infection, which I am prone to, looks a lot like eczema or similar when it is going away) But she insists and just writes me a script for steroid cream. Which of course did no good at all, and in fact made the regrowing infection even more uncomfortable. I swear in future I am going to just stay home and make poltices and potions. All the good medical information and technology in the world doesn't do a body a bit of good if they don't use it.

I am trying to bounce off the walls, but I keep getting captured and herded into a chair with a hot cup and a warm blanky. I am the MAMA for heavens sake! Since when does anybody let me huddle down and be sick when I am sick? I'm not used to this, I keep remembering stuff I haven't finished yet and need to get done. When I try to do any of it I get, "Sit! Rest! Have you taken asprin recently?" I am going gaga here!

NightMist Usually a creature that is constantly in motion

Reply to
NightMist

I like the crust with the apple juice the best anyhow so that would be really fine pie for me.

Cindy

Reply to
teleflora

Really wish I hadn't read this. Now I'm thinking of the no sugar added apple pie from Bob Evans restaurant. Nice and thick, lovely apple slices cooked to perfection, perfect apple-y flavor with a little cinnamon and nutmeg but not too much of either. And most of all none of that artificial syrupy goo that is most of the filling in a bought pie or canned pie filling. Locally it is $10.00 a pie and well worth it because it looks, tastes, and is textured exactly like the pies Grandma used to make. At the first bite I thought the apples had been picked from her trees. Lovely, just lovely. Debra in VA See my quilts at

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Reply to
Debra

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