The Joys of Apple Pie

Apple pie is a tradition in my house, to the point where we are on pie duty at every holiday and family gathering. During high school, every fall we would go pick way more apples than we could possibly eat (I would be bringing 5 or 6 a day to school for a week or more). When we got home, we would set up shop. My sister Indí was always responsible for prepping the apples. We did this so often that we had a special apple peeler-corer-slicer machine.

Which meant we could crank out piles of ready to go sliced/cored/peeled apples in no time:

I was in charge of seasoning the apples. For every pie we've ever made, we use the same recipe out of one of my mom's old cook books. Cinnamon, one part sugar, one part maple syrup (we're from vermont, you need the maple syrup), a dash of nutmeg, a bit of flour, and a little vanilla extract. 

My brother Matteo and my Mom were always in charge of the crust. If you've never made your own crust, I recommend it. Sometimes it can take a while to get down, but once you do, it's worth it. What my Mom and Matteo do is make sure the water they're using is cold. they usually float ice cubes in it while they're mixing the dough. This makes sure that the dough stays cool and the butter doesn't melt and stays in little balls. 

And finally it all comes together and we bake it. We generally make no fewer than 4 pies, and sometimes up to 7 or 8. Often we like to invite friends over for this baking extravaganza, and so whoever comes gets to take a pie home. We generally finish a pie that night, and then slowly work away at the rest at breakfast every morning. 

If you like making apple pies, and you have a toaster oven (you can do it with a normal oven I guess), you should try something that is my favorite part of pie baking: Making mini apple pies with the left overs.

gather all the scraps of dough, and make a little dish out of it. Then find some apple cores, cut off any usable scraps and soak them in the filling mix juice that's left in the bottom of the bowl. Fill the mini pie crust with the little apple scraps, then either cover in another scavenged crust, or a little crumble crust that you made too much of (my personal favorite). Set your toaster oven to 400º and bake for 5-10 minutes and presto: a mini apple pie.