Apple Crumb Pie

I love fruit desserts, as does DH.  We have a beautiful apple tree in our back garden that once a year produces a bumper crop of Anna apples.

These are too tart to eat plain and must be baked into pies or cakes or applesauce (so not, no babies in my house).  So, I researched this and discovered that apples can be peeled, sliced and frozen (or even peeled, cored and and left whole) and I toss them into zip lock bags and they stay beautifully for 6 months.  I try to apportion them for pies or cake amounts and boom, there you go.  Since apples take forever to cook properly in the oven, this lessens cooking time as well.  Win-win.

I have a fabulous recipe from the NYT that I got over 35 years ago called Teddy’s apple cake that I’ll share another time which works and of course, the apple pies.  My son Netanel has a friend Ariel S. who waits all atremble for me to pick the apples (I’ve bribed the boys into picking them in the past) because he can single handedly snorf down a whole pie. After years of playing around, I find that I consistently prefer the pies with a sweet crumble on top with sugar and cinnamon.  My fave recipe is one that is basically ALL crumble and you take about a third of the crumble and pat it down onto the bottom and slightly up the sides of the springform pan.

Here I share with you a little secret.  Remember DH has a thing about most rectangular cakes or desserts that come in “bars”.  So, this recipe started out as a “bar” cookie recipe which I got from the fabulous old cookbook of Rebbetzin Sara Finkel- Classic Kosher Cooking (I loved it so much I gave a copy to all my girls!).  I converted this into a round shaped pie like oject and heheheh he never knew -same recipe, different shape, although the apple filling is simply from my own experience.  It tastes great and once the shape was more pleasing to his eye he was a happy man.  Sigh, if only all things in life were this simple 😉 !

Apple Crumb Pie

Crumble topping and base

2 1/2 cups of flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup margarine or butter (225 grams) room temperature

Apple Filling

12 firm granny smith or anna apples (preferably a tart apple) peeled, cored and thinly sliced- a mandoline can make your life easier (sharp bladed kitchen utensil for cutting thin or thick even slices). Thinly sliced matters – apples take awhile to cook and you don’t want your topping to burn. Slicing them thinly makes them cook faster thereby obviating this problem.

1 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 heaping tablespoons of flour (or a bit more if your apples are especially juicy)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

The joy of this recipe, is that the crumb part is all one bowl. Simply put all the ingredients except for the filling ingredients into the bowl of a mixer and combine until crumbs are formed, like this-

Take a springform pan and spray well with oil spray. Then take approximately a third to a half the mixture and pat onto the bottom of the pan and halfway up the pan. Set aside the crumbs for the top.

Take the thinly sliced peeled apples (and yes, sorry, your really need that many since when the apples cook in the oven, they deflate and in order to have a normal filled pie/cake, you need that bulk). Place into a large bowl with the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Toss with your hands (I put on my trusty latex gloves for this) till the apples are totally coated. Using your gloves if you have them, put the apples on top of the bottom layer of crumbs and with dry hands, crumble the rest of the mixture on top of the apples till completely covered.

Put into the hot 350 degree oven and bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown. The smell alone will drive you mad. It’s delish!