Well last Saturday was apple-picking day for my sister, my 3 nephews and myself. We had the most amazing day at Les Vergers Lafrance and I came home with this huge bag of the most delicious apples ever. Apple pie anyone?? This is my perfect opportunity to conquer my fear of crust and make this recipe from Allrecipes.com has been on my must try list ever since I started baking.
America's Test Kitchen pie crust was my pick since it's foolproof, hence Thanh-proof! The dough work went pretty well with a few Damn-my-dough-stuck-to-the-counter-again moments. So I'm all excited, my apples are all sliced up and looking good, the only thing left to do is the caramel sauce. All ingredients are boiling in the saucepan and I notice I forgot to put in the water. I reach over to measure one tiny tablespoon of cold water and pour it in the mixture...and that's all it took. That tiny bit of cold water was all it took to separate the sugar from the butter and crystallize the sugar to make it as hard as candy.
My saucepan is now home to liquid butter and chunks of hardened sugar. I'm still in denial and out of butter so I go ahead with the recipe anyways and pray that the whole mess will get fixed up in the oven. I should've known better.
THE RESULT:
After 80 minutes of waiting with that pit feeling that my concoction will probably go from the oven straight to the garbage, I hear the timer... I open the oven and only dared to look at it with one eye, here's what came out:
Most of the melted butter has now leaked onto the cookie sheet (I give myself tons of props for at least thinking about putting the pie plate on a cookie sheet just in case.) and half of the sugar chunks are still unattractive chunks. It's too late now to worry, it'll cool overnight and I'll cut into it tomorrow.
Tomorrow came...
The result is a messy pile of apples and candied sugar swimming in a pool of butter enclosed in the most perfect pie crust ever. Did I say "the most perfect pie crust"?
It was hard to let go of "the most perfect pie crust" but the pie itself is not edible so to the garbage it goes. As it lays there on top of all my junk, I couldn't help but wonder, would George Costanza have picked it up and bitten into it?..
Foolproof Pie Dough
make a double crust 9" pie
- 2 1/2cups unbleached all-purpose flour (12 1/2 ounces), plus more for work surface
- 1teaspoon table salt
- 2tablespoons sugar
- 12tablespoons cold unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), cut into 1/4-inch slices
- 1/2cup vegetable shortening , cold, cut into 4 pieces
- 1/4cup vodka , cold (do not substitute)
- 1/4cup cold water
- Process 1 1/2 cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined, about two 1-second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until homogenous dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 15 seconds; dough will resemble cottage cheese curds and there should be no uncoated flour. Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add remaining cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium bowl.
- 2. Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture. With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Divide dough into 2 even balls and flatten each into 4-inch disk. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days.
- 3. Remove 1 disk of dough from refrigerator and roll out on generously floured (up to 1/4 cup) work surface to 12-inch circle, about 1/8 inch thick. Roll dough loosely around rolling pin and unroll into pie plate, leaving at least 1-inch overhang on each side. Working around circumference, ease dough into plate by gently lifting edge of dough with one hand while pressing into plate bottom with other hand. Leave dough that overhangs plate in place; refrigerate while preparing filling until dough is firm, about 30 minutes.
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