We chose to make the pie at one of his fraternity houses, affectionately named “Maple Light” because it is a smaller, albeit cleaner version of it’s neighbor, “Maple.” Well, cooking there was an experience- amidst hungover frat boys who were pleasantly surprised to find the aroma of apple pie wafting through the house.

Okay- Down to the nitty gritty:

Ingredients – Pie Dough

• Generous 2 3/8 cup of all purpose flour
• A pinch of salt
• 3 oz (3/4 of a stick) of butter – softened and cut into pieces
• 3oz (about 7 tbsp) of lard or vegetable shortening – cut into small pieces
• 6 tbsp of cold water
• a beaten egg or some milk (for glazing)

Ingredients – Pie Filling

• 1 lb of Apples (about 5 medium sized)
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp cloves

The dough takes about 10 minutes to make and must refrigerate for another half an hour, so don’t preheat the oven or worry about cutting up the apples until after you’ve made your dough.

To make the dough, sift the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Add in the chunks of butter and lard/shortening until the mixture crumbles up.

I used my fingers to pinch the dough around and make sure there weren’t any big globs of shortening or butter. Keep mixing and pinching…okay, now do it some more. It will look like coffee cake crumbles eventually. Then, add the 6 tbsp of cold water and wrap the mixture together into a dough- again, don’t be afraid to use your hands.

This big happy scrumptous ball of dough can then go into the fridge for a half an hour.

While we were making our pie, the great Shawn Doolen decided to make some lunch…

Then he changed his mind and made tacos. He was kind enough to share.

While the dough is in the fridge, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and wash your apples. Then peel them…

and slice them in half. (You could use an apple corer if you have one, but I was working with limited tools and just cut them in half and triangled out the core on each half).

Slice your apples as thin or thick as you like- but make sure all the slices are the same thickness so they cook evenly (advice from the lovely Nicole).

Once the apples are all sliced up, put them in a bowl and mix in the sugar and the spices. I just mixed them up in with a spoon and marveled at the delicious, sweet, syrupy mixture.

Once the dough is chilled, take it out of the fridge and roll out 2/3 of it in a flat circle, a little more than a quarter of an inch thick. Mold this dough into your pie pan (we just used a cheap foil one from the grocery store).

Now comes the fun part: dump in your syrupy apple mixture into the molded dough. The apples could make a little mound above the edges, depending on how many apples you use.

Roll out the remaining dough for the lid (or pound it out with the heel of your hand if you don’t have a rolling pin- remember, frat house cooking). Wet the edge of the lid and press it over your pie, crinkling the edges to make sure they are attached well.

Lastly, baste the top of the pie in the glaze of your choice; we used a beaten egg. Unfortunately we used a little too much because we didn’t have a pastry brush. Improvising, we poured some on and spread it with a spatula . After basting, sprinkle the top with some sugar and cut slits in a decorative pattern.

Put the pie in the oven for 20 minutes at 450 degrees, and then reduce the heat to 350 for another 30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.

Here is what our pie looked like out of the oven…

And here is is cut…

Voila! Happy Eating!