Grandma’s Apple Pie with Oil Pastry Crust
Grandma’s Apple Pie with Oil Pastry Crust
In Dead of Winter Break, Cassandra celebrates her first Christmas away from her family's home in Hawai'i. When she and her best friend Meg make pies together, this is the family recipe they use for the Apple Pie. Today, just for you, I'm sharing the secret to Grandma's flaky, moist pie crust. This recipe is delicious for any pies you might bake this fall or winter. Don't judge, but I ate some for breakfast. It's seasoned apples inside a pastry crust. That's a fruit serving. Nothing wrong with that.
Servings: 8 slices
Ingredients
Pie Crust – Makes 2 small crusts. Double this to make a deep-dish pie.
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 4-5 tbsp ice cold water add an ice cube to the water for a minute to make it cold enough
Pie Filling
- 5-6 medium sized apples, more if your dish is deep macintosh, jonathan, honeycrisp (it's ok to mix different kinds of apples together)
- 1 tsp cinnamon I like using pumpkin pie spice instead
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar (I use Stevia sugar substitute) depending on tartness of the apples
- 2 tbsp flour
- 2 tbsp butter My grandma used margarine but butter is better, IMHO
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
Prepare crust
- Mix the pie crust ingredients in order with a fork in a medium bowl until it forms a ball. Divide into two smaller balls for a two crust pie.
- Place a 12 inch square of wax paper under the ball and another square on top. Roll the crust until it's large enough to fit in your pie plate. Peel off the top layer of wax paper. Flip the crust into the pie plate and center it. Carefully peel off the wax paper and gently fix any cracks or holes as you form it into the plate. Roll out the top pie crust and set it aside.
Prepare pie filling
- Peel and cut apples into slices and spread them evenly over the bottom crust in the plate.
- Evenly sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the apples. Then sprinkle the flour. Cut up butter into small pats or chunks and place over top of the apples.
- Carefully peel off the top layer of wax paper and flip the top crust over the pie. Center it as best you can. (Mine never looks perfect, but you can fix it later.) Peel off the wax paper and crimp the edges to seal the top and bottom crusts together with your fingers. Use the extras that hang over the edge to fill in the short spots as needed. (If you're freezing the pie, this is where you stop.)
- Kid Tip: If there's extra crust along the edges, you can cut them away from the plate and lay the extra strips on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and bake them for about 5-8 minutes in the oven on a different rack than the pie. This used to be my favorite part of baking pies. My mom might have made extra crust just so there'd be little bits leftover for us to snack on while the pie was baking.
- Sprinkle more cinnamon and sugar over the top crust. With a sharp knife cut a few vent holes in the top. Cut 2-3 strips about 4 inches wide of aluminum foil. Gently wrap the foil around the outer edges of the pie plate so the pie crust edges don't over-bake or burn. Brown, crunchy edges are sad. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove the foil strips and bake for another 25 minutes until the top is golden brown.
- Let it cool on the counter for at least 30 minutes to an hour.
- You can make several pies up to a month or more in advance and freeze them before baking. Cover the pie in plastic wrap first and then foil. To serve, let it defrost overnight in the fridge and bake them per instructions for a fresh pie any time.