Happy Sunday!!
This weekend is the first weekend of fall and I am so excited. You know who else is excited? My coworkers. As they are the lucky recipients of most of the baked goods that I make. Well at least the ones that are good enough for me to share with people. Some things never make it to the counter of my apartment let alone the counter at work.
During my baking spree last weekend, I made a caramel Dutch apple pie. Technically there were two pies because I went all in with the apple peeling and had gone too far to only make one. For apple pies I like to use a mix of apples to get the perfect crunch and sweetness. For this pie I used honey crisp, granny smith, and gala apples and some of my three ingredient caramel sauce to make it extra decadent.
Today I tried to recreate the pie without the caramel sauce and a different topping, and well, it was not good. I didn’t use lemon juice on the apples, I didn’t have any caramel sauce on hand because it all went to work for a cider bar, and I made a different crumb topping that needs some serious TLC before making it big. Oh well, they can’t all be great.
Caramel Dutch Apple Pie
Pie Ingredients
1 9-inch pie crust, homemade or store-bought
5-6 medium apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
3 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon all spice
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
3 Tablespoons butter, cubed
2 oz caramel sauce
Topping Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 Tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Additional Ingredients:
Caramel Sauce
Vanilla Ice Cream
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, toss the apple pieces with the lemon juice. Once covered, add in cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice, ginger, cornstarch and brown sugar. Stir until apples are throughly coated with spices. Pour into prepared pie dish. Place cubes of butter over the top of the pie, and drizzle with caramel sauce. Set aside.
In a large bowl, add all of the topping ingredients. Using a pastry cutter, fork, or your hands, mix ingredients together until little pebble size pieces of topping form. The heat of your hands will help warm the butter, but too much heat will melt it and not make it crumbly. Once the topping is mixed, place on top of the apple pie.
Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes or until the pie is a nice golden brown and the filling is bubbling.
Take out of oven and drizzle with extra caramel sauce. Once fully cooled, about 3 hours, serve with some vanilla ice cream.
