The Most Amazing Apple Pie!

As you may or may not know, I have been on a mission to be a better, healthier person. As part of that mission I have pledge to learn how to make meals and whatnot from scratch. I figured that buying meals and desserts pre-made is a short-cut that will lead to disaster for my health. This has been quite challenging to satisfy my sweet tooth. I suppose that since I am such as sweet person (haha! that cracks me up just to type that) that I will always need sweet stuff to eat. I love pies, cookies, cakes, dark chocolate, pudding....essentially I am a lover of all desserts. 

My attempts to make cakes has been less than a success. After six attempts, I finally got a pumpkin cake that is approved by the man of the house (who doesn't like pumpkin I should note!). After ten attempts, I am still confused to why my vanilla bean cake either falls in the middle or ends up too dry. After three attempts, I think my chocolate cake is good but too rich for the palette of most. It fell in the center the first two attempts but on the third it held up nice. My only concern is that if I make it again I might be sending someone to the hospital for a serious food buzz. 

My cookie ventures have been a bit more successful than my cake baking attempts. Sugar cookies, both the cut-out and drop varieties, have been good. Snicker doodles were...okay. The biggest disaster have been chocolate chip cookies. I have no idea what I did but those little things came out a deflated hot mess...twice. The story of my cookie ventures is representative of my other dessert attempts for the most part. Half of the time my adventures end up good (such as banana pudding) and sometimes they end up not so great. However, I have had higher success rates with making pies. My most recent conquest is my apple crumb pie. This recipe is not for the faint of heart. Like most food I make, it is delicately rich and I go by smell to primarily dictate how much spice to include. So, I will list the spices and let you decide how much to include. I include at least 1/4 tsp of each as a rule of thumb.

What You'll Need:

1 pie crust (Sorry, I won't let my secret recipe out the bag. There is a family history with this thing.)

Filling

4-6 cups peeled and slice tart apples (I use Granny Smith)

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup & 2 tbsp all-purpose flour

Cinnamon, Nutmeg, All Spice

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp lemon juice

Splash vanila extract

Splash of water

Crumb Topping

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

4 tbsp butter, softened

Directions

1) Line bottom and sides of pie dish with the pie crust.

2) In a large pot on medium heat, combine filling ingredients. Warm apples until soft. 

3) While apples are cooking, preheat oven to 400˚ and combine crumb mixture. To combine crumb mixture, use a fork to break apart butter and then use hands to achieve cornmeal texture. Set this aside.

4) Once apples are soft, pour into pie dish piling apples towards the center. To get the crumbed topping, squeeze a handful of the mixture until firm then loosely drop on top of pie. Repeat as desired.

5) Bake for 40-50 minutes or until topping is browned.