The world’s best apple pie=Aunt Debbie’s apple pie

In our book, Celebrate Green!, I recount the heart breaking tale of the year that Aunt Debbie (my husband’s brother’s wife), for some inexplicable reason, failed to make the apple pie that the clan looked forward to as though addicted, every single Thanksgiving for at least a decade.

You’ll have to read the book to understand the poignancy, the sorrow, the bleakness, the devastation surrounding the end of that particular Thanksgiving meal.

Poor Aunt Debbie. I’m guessing she felt chained to apple pie making after so many years and figured it could do no harm to make a melt-in-your mouth pumpkin chiffon-or whatever she came up with. (Not a single soul can remember what the replacement pie was, only that it was most definitely not Aunt Debbie’s apple.) It was an innocent mistake. But no one who attended that long ago Thanksgiving-when-we-had-no-apple-pie, has forgotten it.

The reason I raise this here and we discussed it in the book is because traditions embed in us like DNA. We’d prefer to climb the Rockies in winter-sockless and in shorts-than to have our traditions disrupted.

Therefore, the lesson of this post and of the no-apple-pie Thanksgiving is this: If and when you are introducing new traditions into your celebrations (which we think is a great idea), we’d suggest adding them to the festivities, rather than replacing the old-especially without getting input from those affected.

But for this one mistake, Aunt Debbie is really a wonderful person. Her generosity shines through in her willingness to share the recipe for her apple pie.

Maybe it will become a tradition at your Thanksgiving.

Make a basic pastry dough: (Choose local and/or organic ingredients when available.)

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup (2 sticks) very cold butter, cut into

1” pieces

1 tsp. salt

1/2 cup ice water

Divide the dough in half, flatten each half into a 6” disc, wrap in wax paper and chill at least 30 minutes before rolling out. When ready to roll out chilled dough, let it soften slightly at room temperature. Roll on lightly floured surface to 1/8” thickness. Fit into pie plate trimming the edge even with the lip. Chill while preparing the filling.

FOR THE FILLING:

2 1/2 lbs tart cooking apples (5 -7) (Granny

Smiths are good. I usually use whatever tart apples we have picked ourselves locally.)

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

1 T. butter

Peel, core, and quarter the apples lengthwise. Cut the quarters into 1/2” wedges (you should have about 7 cups.) In a medium sized bowl mix the sugar, the fl our, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the apples and toss to coat them well. Spoon them into the bottom crust, mounding them in the center. Dot the top of the apples with the butter.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. On a lightly floured surface roll out the pastry for the top crust. Place the top crust over the apples and trim the overhang to ½”. Turn the excess top crust under the rim of the bottom crust and crimp decoratively to seal. With the tip of a small knife, cut three steam vents in the top. If desired the top may now be brushed with lightly beaten egg white and sprinkled with 2 T. of sugar. Bake for 40 minutes or until apples are tender when pierced with a knife through one of the steam vents and the crust is golden brown. Transfer to a rack and cool before serving.

And by the way, if you love pie, but hate slicing and coring, you might want to pick up our cast iron apple peeler that actually makes this task fun! It’s in our OpenSky shop.

If you try the recipe, we’d love to know how it turns out!

Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson are mother and daughter and authors of Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions for the Whole Family, and founders of Green Halloween®.