Saturday, October 6, 2007

McIntosh vs. Honeycrisp

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The best apple pie I've had to date was made by our good friend Bill Brady. His apple pie is flawless. He is the one who taught me that McIntosh apples are the ideal apples for a pie and to settle for nothing less! Unfortunately for me, McIntosh apples are nowhere to be found in the place where I live. Thanks to Jordan and Natalie, I recently discovered the wonder of Honeycrisp apples. Though a little pricey, they make a for an excellent choice as a baking apple because of their tartness and how they can maintain their shape after baking. Looks like McIntosh has met its match in Honeycrisp. This was my first attempt at a lattice pie crust. I have always wanted to do one and finally took the time to figure it out the other day. It took a lot less time that I thought it would. Maybe next time I do it, I'll take some pictures as I go and post some instructions on the blog.

My favorite pie crust comes by way of the Barefoot Contessa. Here's her recipe:

1 1/2 sticks very cold unsalted butter
3 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 T sugar
1/3 c very cold shortening
6-8 T ice water

Dice the butter and return it to the refrigerator while you prepare the flour mixture. Place the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter and shortening. Pulse 8-12 times, until the butter is the size of peas. With the machine running, pour the ice water down the feed tube and pulse the machine until the dough begins to form a ball. Dump out onto a floured board and roll into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Cut the dough in half. Roll each piece on a well-floured board into a circle, rolling from the center to the edge, turning and flouring the dough to make sure it doesn't stick to the board. Fold the dough in half, place in a pie pan, and unfold to fit the pan. Repeat with the top crust.

Apple Pie

8-9 large apples, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks (McIntosh or Honeycrisp recommended)
1 1/2 cups sugar
lots of cinnamon
2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 cup flour

Mix together just until apples are coated with dry mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 1 - 1 1/4 hours. (If the top crust is beginning to burn, you can put a sheet of foil over the top.) Let cool for at least a couple of hours. Serve with vanilla ice cream, OF COURSE.

Thanks to Bill Brady for teaching me everything I know about apple pie!

8 comments:

Jillyboo said...

I am so hungry now. I wish I could be fed by you for a week... I'd even dream of a day! I love how passionate and thoughtful you are about food. Your love comes across for both what you make and to whom you serve it to.
How do you get all those cute boarders and graphics on your pictures? Its so cute.

Erin said...

It looks delicious. Honeycrisp are my personal favorite apples too - for baking AND for eating. They are just the perfect crispness and texture, I think! And taste of course. :) YUMMY PIE!

Chrissy said...

It was so good! Thanks for giving us a taste.

Leigh Anne Wilkes said...

Love your blog and your recipes! Thanks so much for sharing your love for food and cooking. I too would love to know what program you are using to create all the cute graphics with your food photos and your fun fonts! Thanks!

Katherine said...

I'm using photoshop to add the borders. I bought the borders from shabbyprincess.com. I love that website! They have a lot of free downloads, too. The fonts come from abstractfonts.com. Also free.

Dana and Chase said...

kathrine~ i can not believe how grown up ur girls are! ok.. im in utah ur in utah we need to get together!

Melody said...

I tried this recipe and loved it. I have to admit I didn't make my own crust, but the store bought crust was good enough for me and I even wove the top so it looked great. Thanks for the recipe! I froze half to see if freezing it works well. I put the filling in a pie shell inside tinfoil so that I can drop it into a new pie crust when I'm ready. Hope it works.

Staci said...

Hi - This is a completely random comment to a post you did almost a year ago.

I don't know where you live in Utah, but I have found that there are two orchards that carry Mcintosh apples. One is Zollingers in Logan (435)752-7810 and the other is somewhere in the Payson/Santaquin area. I talked to Zollingers today (because I have to use mcintosh to make my apple sauce), and they said the macs would be ready around the end of September.

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