It's Chris's 29th birthday and what better way to celebrate than with a mess of food from our favorite neighborhood Chinese restaurant, Tasty Chop Suey, and apple pie? The credit for finding this recipe actually goes to Tom; in 2012 the DOE was furloughing the teachers one day a week so I used the time to do some cooking with the boys. This was a huge hit--not only is it delicious, the crust is very forgiving. So for this recipe, at least, my pastry nemesis is conquered!
Here's the cast.
The crust has a couple of unusual ingredients--the first is baking powder. I whisked it into the flour and salt.
I cut the shortening into cubes and added it to the flour mixture.
Shortening gets to the crumb stage a lot faster than butter does!
The second unusual ingredient is egg yolks--four of them!
Got some ice water ready.
A couple of tablespoons of lemon juice was added to the yolks. I know some people add vinegar to pie crust to prevent it from being overworked. I assume the acid of the lemon juice does the same thing.
The recipe calls for 8-10 tablespoons of iced water. I put eight into the yolk mixture to start.
The yolk mixture is added to the flour mixture a little at a time. Toss it with a fork.
This is what it looked like after all the egg yolk mixture was added. I added three more tablespoons of the iced water before I was able to bring it into a ball.
I separated them into two balls, one slightly smaller than the other and flattened them out a bit. Then I wrapped each disk in plastic wrap and left it in the fridge for a while. The recipe says 30 minutes. I ended up leaving it for a few hours and it was just fine.
I brought the pastry out of the fridge while I prepped the apple filling. Today was pretty cool; if it was hot and humid I would have kept them in the fridge till I was ready to roll out. I used three Granny Smith apples--peeled, cored and chopped.
Sugar, flour and cinnamon were added to the apples and a "dash" of nutmeg.
Isn't this the coolest set of measuring spoons?
The recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar but I put in about 1-1/2 cups.
I rolled the pastry out between two sheets of parchment paper and transferred the bottom crust to the pan.
I had to do some patching, especially in the corners, using some scraps from the top crust. As I said, the pastry is very forgiving!
I laid the top crust on, did some patching, then tucked the upper crust under the lower; I lightly pinched them together to seal. A couple of haphazard slits to let out the steam and into a 375F oven for 45 minutes.
I turned the oven off at the 45 minute mark but left the pie in for about five minutes more.
We let it cool while we ate dinner but when Chris cut into it, it was still nice and warm! I would reduce the sugar a bit more because I would have liked the tartness of the apple to come through a bit more. You can drizzle it with powdered sugar, lemon juice and milk but we like it plain. Besides, there was ice cream...
Happy birthday, Chris!
Here's the promised recipe:
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