Apple Pie

I made apple pie when I was home in KL during the eid holidays. Not exactly your traditional Eidilfitri dessert but it proved to be popular and was gone within a day. And it was just the family. I used Mark Bittman's pastry recipe (from online and from Jo's recommendation) and it was good, but I have to say the the recipe from the America's Test Kitchen which uses scary amount of butter and shortening (yes, shortening) has a flakier and fluffier texture. I will write out the recipe below.

The one from Mark Bittman can be found online (link below). As I said, also good, and and I will probably use it again as I like that it uses all butter and a reasonable amount. I suspect it was too hot of a day that day I made this to get the best result from this recipe, I look forward to trying it out again. http://www.howtocookeverything.tv/recipe.php%3Fnid=191.html

I did not use a specific recipe for the filing. I used about 5 small mix of apples, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, dash of cinnamon and a little lemon juice. I also added 1 tbspn of flour, should have added another tablespoon as the filling was a little runny. But it was tasty all the same.

Pie Crust (from The Best American Classics by America's Test Kitchen)
For one double-crust 9 inch pie

2.5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
8 tbspn all-vegetable shortening, chilled
12 tbspn unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/4 inch pieces
6-8 tbspn ice water

methods (note: not verbatim from book, too lazy to type everything out)
1. pulse flour, salt, sugar in food processor. add shortening, pulse 10 seconds
2. scatter butter and cut into flour until resembles coarse crumb, butter bits no larger than small peas, about 10-1 second pulses.
3. turn mixture into bowl, sprinkle water, from dough.
4. divide into two balls, flatten into a 4-inch wide disk
5. wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour before rolling

Baking instructions: Preheat oven at 500 F, place filled pie on baking sheet and lower temperature to 425F. Bake until top is golden brown about 25 minutes, rotate pie and reduce temp to 375F, continue baking until deeply golden brown, 25-30 minutes. ( I would keep an eye out so that it doesnt get too burned, you may need to cover the edges with foil or pie edge cover along the way).