Deep dish apple pie

Things have been a little slow here at Home Baked lately. We haven't stopped cooking (or eating!), or even taking pictures, but sharing them with you has taken a back burner to meetings, projects, concerts, classes, laundry and various home and car repairs. Our garbage disposal literally fell out of the sink cabinet! How does that happen?

Deep Dish Apple Pie

So I dug into the photos piling up on my hard drive and remembered this pie I made for a Superbowl party. Somehow, after eating ridiculous amounts of nacho cheese dip and a bowl of chili, I still managed to consume a big bowl of this pie with ice cream. I found the recipe in an interesting cookbook, Sweet!, by Mani Niall. It's full of recipes using all sorts of natural sugars and sweeteners. Here, instead of sweetening the pie filling with sugar, you start with sweet apples and add apple juice concentrate. I added some butter to the filling and reduced the cinnamon, but nobody noticed the missing sugar. I can't wait to try this pie with some different fruit fillings, too. Another great thing about this pie is its portability. Instead of making two pies for a crowd, just make one big one in a 9x13 baking dish!

Deep Dish Apple Pie


Crust:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 pieces
3/4 cup ice water, give or take

Filling:
8 large Fuji or Gala apples, peeled, cored and sliced
3 T. lemon juice
1 1/2 cups frozen apple juice concentrate, thawed
2/3 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 T. butter

Mix flour and salt, then cut the butter in with a pastry blender until the mixture is crumbly. (You could use the food processor method, instead.) Gradually add the ice water and stir gently until the dough begins to hold together. Press the dough together, divide into 1/3 and 2/3 portions, shape into rectangles, and wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Toss the apples with the lemon juice. In another bowl, whisk together the apple juice concentrate, cornstarch and cinnamon.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Roll out the larger piece of dough between two pieces of wax paper to a 15x18 inch rectangle. Transfer to a 9x13 inch baking dish. Spread the apples into the crust and pour the apple juice mixture over them. Cut the butter into pats and scatter across the apples. Roll the smaller portion of dough into a 10x14 inch rectangle and place it on top of the apples. Tuck the edges of the top crust into the sides, pinch the edges of the top and bottom crusts together, and crimp them decoratively. Cut several slits in the crust.

Bake about 2 hours, until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbly.  Cool on a wire rack; serve warm or at room temperature.