641.5 Better: Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (or, The Best Apple Pie, Ever. Part 1.)

Many people claim to have enjoyed the Best Apple Pie, made by their sister, or uncle, or grandmother. Or that diner off of I-84. But really, how can there be so many "best" apple pies out there? It's simply not mathematically possible. Besides. When I was a kid, my mom's apple pie really was the best, ever. Hands down. Everyone said so. So, while yours might be very very good, there's no way it was The Best.

Sadly, my mom passed away when I was 18. This was before my love of good food and cooking really took hold, so I never mastered her pie recipe under her guidance. I would help in the kitchen, quite a lot, but it was always her show. And now, 20 years later, I am really craving a slice of that apple pie. I’ve had apple pie since, of course, even excellent pie, but nothing has ever come close.

A few times over the years I've tried to re-create the pie myself. I now have her early 1960s, well-worn copy of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, which she used quite a lot. It’s filthy, stuffed with clippings and hand-written recipes and notes, and literally falling apart to the point that I have it bound together with kitchen string. But to be honest, I can't recall if she used this exact recipe or not. It's quite possible she tweaked, adapted, or simply ignored the recipe altogether. And of course, neither my extended family nor my siblings are of any help. They never made the pie themselves - why should they, when Mom’s was too good to compete with?

Her recipe, whether taken from a book, her own memories, or her imagination, was a classic one. There were no surprises or odd ingredients or techniques. It was a simple and traditional interpretation, but she rocked it.


In the past, my biggest problem when making this pie was the apple filling. It always, always came out too watery. Fellow bakers have suggested many remedies, including using a different (better) dough recipe, different apples, adding cornstarch, straining the apples from their watery sugar-cinnamon juices, cooking them in a skillet first, baking the pie twice as long as the recipe called for, even adding stale cake crumbs to the bottom of the pie (???). Where to begin? After many failed pies, and several holiday meals where I disappointed my father and siblings, I gave up. Until now.


I am much more mature and wise nowadays. (Ha.) I've at least gained enough sense not to proclaim to my entire family that one of my mother's greatest gifts would be revived this very Christmas, only to crush their expectations with a soggy, depressingly mediocre pie. So I've decided to figure out how to bring to life the Best Apple Pie in private, at home, with only my husband to disappoint.


There are countless apple pie recipes lurking in the 641.5 aisles at the library. I figured I should start with a simple, basic pie recipe and see where it gets me. The new, 15th edition Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, along with so many others, has a classic Apple Pie recipe, along with tips and tricks to ensure your pie is The Best. Of course, the tips vary from book to book, some so much they outright contradict each other. I am almost daunted by the task. Almost.


As far as cookbooks go, this new one, no matter how close to the original it may be, will never hold much sway over me. I'm sure it's fine, for some people. But my old, tattered, stained copy is full of memories, of love, of mistakes and triumphs, and a little bit of who my mom was. Its recipes will always be superior, because they were the ones she relied on, used for inspiration, recoiled from, and grew to know by heart. It is my most prized cookbook, and I rarely - if ever - use it. But it's a comfort just knowing it's there.

But everytime I open it, the book literally falls apart in my hands. So, I will go with the shiny bright new one. I figured the new recipe is close enough to the old one, and it's really just a starting point, anyway. I concurrently consulted Baking at Home with the Culinary Institute of America, which has another basic, straightforward recipe. After consulting the two recipes, I decided to use half butter and half shortening to aim for the perfect flavor/flaky balance. I'm not sure if Mom made an all-"butter" crust, or used shortening, or some combo of the two. She actually used margarine in her cooking and baking, not butter (hey, this was 20+ years ago, who knew?), and now I wonder if that was the key to obtaining the perfect combo of butter flavor and shortening flake power that's hard to replicate in a less artery-hating, trans-fat way.

I made sure to use very cold butter and shortening, which I've since learned helps to make a flaky crust. My understanding is that if the butter (or other fat) is allowed to melt, it will be absorbed more easily by the flour and less likely to produce a crust that is flaky. Somehow, my fridge had only one small chunk of butter - about 3 tablespoons. Highly irregular, but I managed to accept and move forward, and I simply adjusted my shortening amount. I started the dough in my food processor. Some cookbooks suggest doing this, some say it will never result in a proper crust. I believe that because what we're doing in this step is to cut the fats and blend them into the flour, and ideally we're doing this quickly so the fats can stay cold, it makes perfect sense. A few pulses, and you're done. I think I should have gone with a few more pulses, as my "pea-size" crumbs of butter and shortening were a bit on the large size.

 

Before adding the water, I dumped the mixture into a large bowl. I find I have better control over the amount of mixing I do using just a fork, and another widely used tip is to never overwork the dough. The water should be very cold too - again to keep the butter from melting - and should go in just a tablespoon at a time. Only add enough so that the dough, when squeezed, will hold together.

The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook offers a chart with several fruit fillings you can add to your pie shell. It tells you how to prep the fruit, how much of it you need, and the amount of sugar and flour to add. It doesn't suggest particular apple varieties, as some other books do, which I think is a mistake. There are countless varieties, and they can be quite different in both level of sweetness and texture. It can literally make or break a pie. I decided to use Granny Smith, after a bit of book and Internet searching. They're tart, and they hold their shape well when cooked.

I peeled, sliced, and cored my apples, drizzled them with lemon juice (to prevent them from going brown), measured in my sugar, flour, and cinnamon, mixed it all up, and poured it into my pie shell.

 I looked down at the mound of apples, freckled with cinnamon, slick with apple juice-sugar syrup. Something's missing. I looked. Apples, cinnamon, sugar. Huh. Everything appears to be in order. I covered the pie with the top crust, crimped the edges and cut the steam holes, and put the pie in the oven. I checked the Culinary Institue book to compare baking times, and noticed their recipe calls for dots of butter on top of the apples. D'oh!

Memories came flooding back. My mom's version of apple filling resulted in a mountain of apples, a really, very, absurdly high pile of them, threatening to avalanche down and onto the counter. She'd gently pack them down, securing them, adding a few more slices until it was just impossible to add any more. Then she'd add the butter. She often let me cut it up for her, first into pats and then each pat into little squares. I don't remember how much butter she used overall, just that the tower of apples was dotted thoroughly and evenly with creamy bits of butter before she covered it with the crumb topping. (Crumb topping?!?! D'ooohhhhh!)


Of course, I was so busy trying to remember whatever shortening-to-butter ratio there may have been for the crust, I somehow totally forgot that Mom always added these little dots of butter, and she always went with a crumb topping. I don't recall what exactly went into the crumb topping, though I'm sure it was a fairly traditional mix of flour, butter, and sugar. She was never big on "secret ingredients," she was more of a technique master, I think. I've seen a few recipes for crumb topping that call for oats, and while I'm sure that would be totally delicious, I refuse to go that route. If mom didn't do it, neither would I. Plus, the top crust was already on the pie.


The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook's baking time was spot-on, and the pie was golden and fairly decent-looking, although my steam holes looked like murderous gashes (decorative pastry art does not come to me naturally), and half the top crust collapsed a bit. Upon slicing, I noticed a huge gap between the apples and the top crust, which seemed cavernous and puzzling. I suddenly understood Mom's obsession with crumb topping.


The apple filling was very tasty, if just a bit too sour. (I blame the lemon juice.) The crust was fine, not great. Decent flavor, and while it was flaky, it was also a bit too brittle - too crispy and cracker-like, and not the perfectly tender-flaky crust of my childhood. Perhaps because the flour-butter crumbs were closer to Brussels sprout-sized than pea-sized?


The pie was polished off quickly (thanks to my friends and their four tween-y kids), so it wasn't a total failure. But I'm still on a mission. Now, what to do differently...?