Skillet Apple Pie from Cook's Illustrated American Classics Magazine, 2010

Throughout this special issue American Classics magazine, I've been thinking of other dishes that would be appropriate to be included, especially considering the fact that both the Charcoal-Grilled Beef Fajitas and Quesadillas are in there and neither are American. Some that came to mind are: macaroni and cheese, Yankee pot roast, and pumpkin pie. I'd say we should claim hot dogs, but since the original is the frankfurter and that's German, no can do, but the variety famous at baseballs stadiums is all ours. Any others you can think of?

Of course, apple pie is at the top of the list for everyone, right? I won't mention the fact that it was made in other countries before ours was even born and that the English that settled here brought the recipe over with them. It is still a dish that dates back to our earliest days and so it's fitting that the recipe in Cook's Illustrated be Skillet Apple Pie.

If you read yesterday's post, you'll know what I went through in order to get to this point. I had everything ready to make this pie and then realized that I didn't have any apple cider or apple juice, so I made my own. In a way, that probably made the pie even better because the cider was 100% pure and the apples used to make it were the same variety as in the pie. Talk about keeping things local.

Apple pies really are not hard to make; they're just time consuming because they use, on average, five to seven apples, all of which need to be cored, peeled and sliced. Other than that, there's a combination of spices, a splash of juice and lemon, a thickener and crust. Most people trip up on the crust part.

The author of this recipe gets around the possibility of a soggy bottom crust by removing it altogether, hence the use of a skillet. She (Yvonne Ruperti) also added a step that I think was pure genius and took the flavor of the pie to another level (I very well may eat the entire thing myself as a result). Before adding anything to the apples, they're briefly cooked in butter over high heat until they just start to caramelize and then removed from the heat before they get soft. It's fantastic.

My crust bombed though. It was way, way too wet. This recipe calls for a total of 8 tablespoons of a butter and shortening combination and 3 tablespoons of water.  Most recipes I use require around 5 tablespoons of shortening or butter and 3-4 tablespoons of water. Since this recipe told me to "Sprinkle 3 tablespoons ice water over mixture," and then said to add up to one more tablespoon if the dough did not come together, I did put in the three before even mixing as instructed. If I hadn't been doing this as a review, I would have held back, but, that's not how it goes in this thing. I do them as they tell me to do.

I let the dough sit in the refrigerator for a long time in hopes that it would get firm enough to roll and used as much flour as I could, but it was still flimsy and barely made it to the skillet, where it started to melt as soon as it hit the warm apples. Even carefully running the brush with egg whites over it made it fall apart. If I did this again, I'd cut the butter down a couple of tablespoons for sure.

Even with the crust blooper, this pie is a winner, especially with the caramelized apples. I like the rusticness of the cast iron skillet, though the magazine used what looks like All-Clad (another favorite of mine).  The flavor worked well, though I know different apples will vary the taste. There was enough lemon and cinnamon. I prefer nutmeg as well, but they added a secret ingredient (buy the magazine) that really worked.

So, finally the apple pie is made and I still have a couple quarts of apple cider to enjoy. Life is good. Maybe I'll watch some baseball.