This looks like apple pie. It tastes like apple pie. The topping is streusel. The middle is, of course, filled with a staggering amount of sliced granny smith apples and a whole lot of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and what have you. And it was heavenly. The trick is to "chill" the finished pie. This requires planning as you may want to make it the day before you are planning to serve.
As the pie bakes, the apples shrink, the streusel topping gets crackly and yummy. With the thick pie dough to hold the pie up, once the dough is chilled, you slice the pie and serve on a plate as
apple-pie-cookie bars. No fork required. One solid slice that stays stacked and solid after sliced. Skinny slices work--not your "normal pie thick" slices--to really get the true cookie experience.
(*Note: As you can see, I baked my pie in a pie shell, however, to get the true "bar cookie" effect, you may swap out the round shell for a square 8" pan.)
The parking lot incident is told after the recipe so as not waste anyone's time.
Here's how the "pie-became-cookie" recipe happened.
There is the crust. Any single pie crust recipe will do. Mine happens to have very little thought behind it, but a lot of precision insofar as the mixing of said dough goes--and it is rather thick on the bottom, baking up to almost a shortbread type of cookie base for all those apples.
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup spelt flour
5 tablespoons Earth Balance butter cut into small cubes
3 tablespoons vegan shortening cut into small cubes or pieces
1/4 teaspoon sugar
pinch of fine sea salt
1/4 - 1/3 cup ice cold water
The secret to wonderful pie dough: careful handling. Sift all the dry ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl. Then first add the butter pieces and mix in with a fork until you have pea-sized pieces of flour/butter mixture. Then add the shortening, and do the same, only now the pieces will be smaller. Add ice water to mixture one tablespoon at a time, mixing with a fork after each addition. Pinch a piece of dough together to see if it holds, if it does and you can hold a wad of the dough in your palm, then you have added enough cold water. Remove dough from the bowl onto counter and begin to knead the dough until it forms a ball. Put the dough in fridge for about thirty minutes. After dough is chilled, remove and roll out and place in the pie shell (a 9-inch pie shell), and place in the fridge while you prepare the apples.
I used seven apples--all granny smith. Toss apples with 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, pinch of fine sea salt, juice of half a lemon, 2 tablespoons flour. Remove the pie shell from fridge and roll to about 1/4" thick. Place in pie or pan and tap out to the edges and up the sides. Pinch the top overhang over and give it that nice "pie crust" pinching. Place apple mixture in pie shell.
Make the streusel:
1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1/3 cup meusli
4 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
pinch of fine sea salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 tablespoons Earth Balance butter (plus 2 tablespoons reserved for topping the pie)
Preheat oven to 400. Mix all ingredients together in medium bowl with a fork until small crumbs form. Sprinkle over the pie. Bake pie for 30 minutes at 400. Then turn oven down to 350 and bake for one hour. *Use a piece of foil over the pie if the crust begins to brown too much. I actually added foil over the pie about halfway through baking.
Yesterday I had to venture out. It's not a good time for introverts of any kind to find themselves in stores. From now until about a week after Christmas, strategic planning goes on with regard to anything I have to do that requires me to navigate people. Since I am the "bringer of food/essentials" into the home, the duty falls to me. Doing so leaves me feeling exhausted, stressed and completely ready to sleep for the remainder of the year. I know it's the holidays, but truly don't feel so jolly this year.
(Lack of snow, days of rain, fifty-sixty degree weather. Ew.)
Yesterday, I knew I'd reached some crossover point of stress when this happened.
I have a routine monthly stop at a big box store. It's a necessary evil. But I hate the store. Invariably,
I will have a "crazy human story" to share with DH after most of my stops there.
It makes for good dinner banter.
As I said, it's routine shopping, so I have made this stop countless times, could do it in my sleep.
I was trying to stay positive and "cheery". I shop with my sunglasses and baseball cap on. That's all I got in the cheery department right now.
Just call it an extra layer of "please don't talk to me".
(At least for the four hours it takes to gather all the detritus we need to live.)
I pulled into a parking lot I'd thought I'd pulled into a hundred times.
Something seemed off. It was almost three in the afternoon. I was on my last stop.
The "worst" for last.
I parked the car. The lot was full. All parking lots are full now, I noticed several people sitting in their cars. I thought it was odd, but nothing beyond that. I had my list, my mission.
Maybe all these folks suffered the same ailment of "people" aversion?
Well, off I walked. First one direction. Looking up, I saw the corner I imagined being where the normal entrance to said store was, was all brick--no shopping carts, no nothing. Crickets. Well, perhaps I have my directions screwed up. I must have parked somewhere else last time I made this stop. So back I walk, along this LONG brick wall. Looking for the entrance to the store. I get another brick corner. What the. . .?
Then I stopped and noticed someone in front of me wearing a logo of a store I was not intending to shop--literally speed walking to the designated entrance to the store--which was on the other side from where I parked.
That's when it dawned on me. I had parked in not only the wrong store lot, but the employee lot of ANOTHER big box store (which would explain the people sitting in their cars--either on break or in despair over hating their jobs. I had days like this.)
Now that I am "that crazy lady walking the parking lot in glasses and hat", I finally locate my car. Because by now, I am completely flustered and had to pinpoint where I may have parked in the first place. In this wrong lot.
Get in my car. Tell myself it's going to be okay. Couple of deep breaths.
It's just another awful December.
It'll be over in about thirty more days.
Fa. La. La.
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