The BEST Apple Pie Recipe

Hello everyone, you are watching the preppy kitchen where I, John Canel, teach you how to prepare delicious homemade dishes to share with your friends and family. Today we're going to make this incredibly delicious

apple

pie that has the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity like explosions in your mouth and you're like, oh my gosh, what's going on? I'm in love, thank you, this is the

best

, so let's get started. I'm using my all-time favorite pie crust

recipe

. I just duplicated it for two disks because I need one for the bottom and one for the top lattice.

You can click here to watch the full instructional video. All the ins and outs. All you need to know. I also have the full

recipe

in the blog post so you can click that in the description below it's basically 300 grams of all-purpose flour, a quarter cup of sugar or 50 grams in the bowl of your food processor along with a quarter teaspoon of salt, mix it together and then add a cup of unsalted butter at room temperature, that's 226 grams if you count the whiskey and then you'll add a quarter cup of ice water in a splash along with two tablespoons of vodka, Don't worry, it will burn, beat it a few times. until you get a rough, shaggy dough, place it on a pastry mat, work with it just three or four times and then you have your disk that you can wrap in plastic and chill, it's that easy, okay, this needs to go back in the refrigerator to let it be nice and cold while we work on our filling, you're going to prepare the

apple

pie filling for your apple pie.

You can do two things: you can make it go into that dough or you can make it cook completely. and save it for later, this is delicious on any number of spoonable desserts, ice cream topping, whatever, let me know in the comments what you put the apple pie filling in, really tasty, I just have to publish it, it's good to make our apple. pie filling we need three pounds of apples that you personally like. I like honey crisp apples but they are super expensive so you can use them like your favorite gala apple, your favorite, whatever you want as long as it's not red delicious because those are the most disgusting fruit I've ever seen in my life.

Life, let's get back to the matter, three pounds of apples. We need to peel them, remove the pulp and cut them, so let's get started. If you have children with clean hands, this is a perfect activity for them. As long as they are not cut, keep them in a bowl while we peel. This amount of filling will make a regular nine-inch cake. If you have a deep dish or maybe a ten inch pie, go ahead and add an extra fifty percent or you could even double it and have some apple pie filling for later. Apple pie is one of my favorite desserts and my mom used to make it all the time, but it was like her, to me it was like her version of a French macaroon.

Where it was almost impossible to get it right or meet her own expectations, she was always bothered that her pie crust wasn't flaky enough. This apple pie is nice and flaky, however, okay, around the corner, all the apples have been peeled, thank you. OMG, in case you're not an apple pulp cutter, just go ahead and cut it from the core, hopefully you won't get too much. You have extra pieces that you can crumble and the same goes for any extra skin that you forgot to remove, so we're just making little one inch dice, basically with our apple a little bigger, smaller, it doesn't matter and you'll continue this process until May all your apples only have the cores left from the last apple, oh my God.

I thought it was over. I need about a quarter cup of lemon juice. Here the acidity will really wake up. The apples will give you a nice contrast to the sweetness. And I want to zest half a lemon. Good thing I did it. I didn't finish squeezing it well, so let's remove the zest. This is not the ideal way to zest the lemon, but it will work. Save it for a minute and then just add it. Stir quickly. Now let's add two. thirds of a cup of sugar, that's one third and two thirds, yes, that's a lot of sugar, but it's a cake, people okay, throw this out one more time, I'm using my clean hands, okay, we'll leave this to one side and we'll work a little in the pan.

Now you need to wash them, place a quarter cup of unsalted butter in a large pan and let it melt once the butter is melted and delicious, it's time to add the apples carefully, let's cook these apples. over medium high heat for maybe 2 or 3 minutes, we want them to start to really release their juices, so cook over medium high heat and then move them around from time to time so you can see there are a ton of juices coming out at this point, all the juices will reduce and it forms almost a caramel, it's going to be amazing to reduce it to medium low right now and I'm adding half a teaspoon of cinnamon.

Mix in the apples and add the reserved lemon zest now too and this is kind of optional, but I'm going to add a little bit of nutmeg, mmm look how pretty the inside of a nutmeg is. Give the pan one last turn, we'll cover this and let it cook for about seven or eight minutes. You can stir it once or twice, but it will really only reduce, soften the apples, and make them more delicious. Well, give it that time. The apple pie filling has been cooking for about five minutes, so I'm going to sprinkle on my cornstarch. now and then mix it in, don't worry about the lumps, they will all dissolve after the cornstarch has worked a little, you can close it again, it will continue to cook, thicken and gain all that delicious flavor, why?

I use this heavy cast iron skillet, carefully separate the apples from the juice, use a lighter skillet unless it is strong and weighs like 30 pounds or something when cooking the apples if you are baking them in the pie crust you want . At this point, it's softened, but when you take a bite it still has plenty of mouthfeel. It's not like a soft apple. You're not making applesauce here, if you're making apple pie filling, go ahead and continue cooking it. lower it a little you don't have to separate the juices or anything because they will thicken as you cook the apples one two three these juices will return to the pan over medium-low heat we want to thicken them just a little so that our cake doesn't turn out like a mess when we cut basically, but by the way, do you see this beautiful color?

Look at all that cinnamon apple, this is like if I was going to drink this simple mineral, maybe you could add a little. bourbon rum let me know in the comments how to turn this into an apple pie cocktail oh my goodness that's genius okay just cook it until you see it thicken a little bit you don't want it to turn into a thick caramel, what's more. of a sauce and we're doing this on medium-low heat right now we're just letting some of the water reduce from the liquid so it has a really more concentrated flavor, you can see the steam coming out, that's the water right now We can transfer those apple chunks back into our bowl, these juices have thickened up nicely, you can see here, it's taking them a while to, you know, cover their tracks, so to speak, we can just pour this over our apples, oh my gosh. , this frying pan, I told myself. like, oh, I'll be back in shape when the kids are heavier, which they make like you have to lift them all the time, but I don't know, it hasn't helped everything, mix this candy with the apples and yeah I cooked the apples long enough Initially, it is an apple pie filling, so set it aside to cool.

We want it to be very close to room temperature so this can sit in the refrigerator and make some friends while we work on the pie dough. I'll get right back to our cold pie crust. I'm so excited that you can see all the beautiful little pieces of butter here, that's exactly how it should be. We're going to give this a good, liberal pinch of flour. This continues here. More flour for spreading. move it around our goal is to keep things from sticking using a pastry mat helps because you can move them the flower is your friend here okay and now we're going to start in the center and move outwards and then change the direction of your rolling pin as well and then after a couple of rolls, you'll like lift the dough, sprinkle a little more flour, just keep moving, it's like a shark, it can't stay still, it has to keep moving.

I'm going up. all of this in my how to make pie crust recipe we talked about but that video continues for a no bake pie crust we talked about blind baking you know how to make things hold their shape in the oven okay , because those glasses are so slippery and slippery it's like a Washington politician I'm ready for my radio career okay sprinkle sprinkle change directions this looks good you can still see the butter coming out it's uh happy malleable pie crust take a rolling pin on a final Sprinkle flour right there and now we can just roll it out, transfer it to our cake pan before we start moving things around, make sure it's more centered than not and then what I like to do is push the cake dough out, especially those. sides where you have more hanging that way you're not stretching it you're pushing it in and I find it shrinks less okay let's get this out tap tap tap tap we don't want wrinkles we want to have a nice even surface to play on and the last step is that we can trim the excess.

You can use scissors or a knife and the overhang is fine. This is left aside. Now we can roll them for later, more flour. Wow, now let's roll out that second batch of dough and cut it into strips to get the lattice you want the strips to be, maybe 11 inches long for a 9 to 10 inch pie crust. A knife is totally fine for this or you can also use a pizza cutter. a pizza cutter and the strips don't even have to be the same thickness, it might have a little play, we can set these strips aside, repeat the process with the rest of the dough if you are a responsible person and I made a large disk since I didn't do it for this, then you would be done by now.

If I need extra dough, I have my leftovers that I can roll out in case of emergency, but for now I think we're ready to assemble the filling. It's cooled enough not to melt all the dough, so let's add that in there, look at this delicious filling, how it catches the light, nice caramel color, smooth out all that pie filling, smooth out, smooth out, smooth out, this is important because We are putting up our trellis. down and I don't want to have crazy indentations, then it's time to design our trellis, big overlapping pieces, you can leave as much space between the strips as you want.

I'm going for maybe like a quarter of an inch, you can also go straight to the edges if you want, it's always better to have more than less once you've laid down the first layer, you'll lift up every other strip, place another one in the middle and then the strips will return. below many of you have probably already made a trellis but some of you haven't and it's so easy and fun to do it really well one side is done time for the other very excited because I thought maybe I wouldn't have enough dough and I would have to do it. use the scraps, but the scraps will still be scraps, we're done, but what about the edge?

Well, you can do whatever you want for the edge, but I think it looks better when you fold everything under it, we have enough to do, we have enough room. here so you can cut off a little bit of excess that you want to keep, maybe there's about an inch of the overhang left, don't worry if it doesn't look perfect because no one will notice, okay, now let's fold under, so here just lift and fold , okay, that looks pretty good. We're very close to finishing the egg wash, a splash of cream per tablespoon if you're measuring and now you want to beat it really well, so I like this to be totally smooth, no random bits of egg white left.

Brush the beaten egg gently. I actually have a soft sable brush that I use because it doesn't really flatten the dough, it's very soft, it's like a soft kiss from your lover, but with the beaten egg, it gets all those nooks and crannies instead, so hit it. . those corners, the sides everywhere with the beaten egg, if you skip any part, it will be like if you put sunscreen on one part of your body and get a tan, it's like an ugly white spot, so take your time. The moment you listen to your favorite podcast and gently apply the beaten egg, that looks perfect.

I think I have every last bit of the cinnamon sugar. I'm taking a quarter cup of granulated sugar. You could also use sanding sugar if you like. I want it to be extra shiny and crunchy and then maybe half a teaspoon or less of cinnamon, it gives you a nice. I'll go for a full half teaspoon. I'm living large, sprinkle it evenly. This is an optional step, but I love it. I love it, here we go, a nice American dessert, my eyes, I didn't expect there to be sugar everywhere. Oh thank God I was wearing glasses,so what is going to happen is that we are going to take care that the cake dough elongates. of aluminum foil and we're going to wrap it around the cake.

You can fold it like a small corner to make it stick. You can even give him a tear like that. Now gently, always gently fold the top to protect the edge. your pie because it has to bake for about an hour, almost so covering the pie crust makes a big difference, let the edge cook really nice and slow and then the middle will be a nice, beautiful golden color, it'll go in the oven. at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes, you can check if it looks a little crispy and lower it to 375, but if not, keep baking it at 400 until the center is nice and golden brown and at that point the inside will be bubbling and delicious, the filling The cake is basically ready, so you don't have to do that much.

It's really the cake we're worried about, and by the way, this was a big, deep cake, so heavy that I want to take a moment just to appreciate the scoop of ice cream. perfect. It's the most perfect scoop of ice cream I've ever made. in my life, okay, I'll take a bite just for you, that's so good, it has the perfect balance of sweet and spicy, it has the right mouthfeel, the apples are cooked enough, they don't fall apart, but They are not crunchy, they just like to have a little bit of spring in your mouth and it's like a spicy candy, perfectly seasoned, you will never eat a store bought pie again, they are almost as sweet and boring.

I don't like this honey, if you like this recipe and I don't know how you can't check out my pie playlist which has my perfect pie crust recipe, how to make all my favorite pies and you're going to be baking up a storm, I I promise. Okay, if you like my videos, hit the like button and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.