How to make apple pie...?
 

I have my Mom's recipe for apple pie. Its easy... 6 Granny Smith apples peeled, pared, and sliced, arranged in a pie shell. Sprinkle 1/2 c sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon mix over the apples.... Mix 1/2 c sugar, 2/3 flour and cut 1/3 c butter into the flour & sugar mix. Sprinkle that over the apples.... bake 425 for 40-50 minutes.

My problem is EVERY time I make this the pie is soggy. Tastes great. But soggy. Really soggy. Like 1/2 inch of water in the pie soggy. This past weekend I poked a hole in the pie tin after baking to let the water drain.

What am I doing wrong? I've tried different apples... I tried slicing thinner... help!

You've forgotten the part about removing from the premises all horny teenage boys who watch too many movies.

I've never been able to get apple pie right, either. Are you pre-baking the pie shell?

Save your strength and buy Mrs. Smith's or similar frozen. Perfect every time.

Do you let it sit before you cut it? This is huge! If I don't let it sit until it cools down, there is a huge amount of juice. Do you pat dry the apples before you put it in the crust to bake?

Just a couple suggestions. I think homemade pie is the best thing....even though I never eat it. When at all possible, I make it from scratch (except for the crust. Haven't got that much expertise yet)


Just curious, though, what kind of crust are you using? Just trying to figure out how you would poke a hole through the bottom of the pan. I also wouldn't drain it if I were you. If people like it the way it is, don't mess with good pie :)

or, soak the apples first in salted water to draw out excess moisture?

I have no idea if that would work, btw.

I am lazy and used Marie Calendars frozen pie crust - so it comes in a thin tin pan, easy to poke a small hole into. I've tried making my own, but it takes too long and never looks as nice. I add the apples while the shell is still frozen.
I put the apples in a colander to drain - I'll have to try to pat them dry next time. And yes, I'm impatient and cut into the pie before it cools...
I drain it because I worry the pie will go bad (mold, mildew) quickly if its soaking in juice. And the pie still tastes good :)

here are some further tips I found via the magic of the Internet:


and here's an article on the topic: http://www.here-now.org/features/200...Cooks_SO05.pdf ETA: tho doesn't seem to be a complete article. :(

I make my mother's recipe as well and there is always some sort of liquid after baking. I usually store it in the fridge after the first cut and have never had a problem with it going bad. I usually leave it out of the fridge to cool.

All the years that my mother made the pie, there was always extra juice. I am pretty sure the only sure fire way to get rid of it is to use dried apples or something and I am guessing that it doesn't taste too good. Just remember, apples are juicy when raw, it only makes sense that the juice would come out with baking.

Also, I would suggest checking the directions on the crust you use. Maybe it is from the crust defrosting in the oven.

Al in all, I wouldn't worry about it if it tastes good.

Totally without knowledge, experience, or research, I see two ways to approach the problem.
1. reduce the amount of juice - drain, pat-dry the apples. Maybe even pre-bake them a little.
2. keep the juice but add a thickener - cornflour or something similarly starchy, maybe even pectin which is used to make jam (jelly to you Americans) set. Letting it set would be necessary for this.

Lateral solution. Make it just as it is, but call it "Apple-stew pie". Define it as perfect. If it tastes good ... why not?

I'd make apple crisp instead. Tastes better and is easier to make. Outstanding with ice cream.

1 can apple pie filling, 1 crust, bake. And boy does it suck, compared to homemade. IMHO

just sprinkle more flour into the apples when you lay them out. Also, remember that sugar turns into a liquid when it's heated. You could use less sugar if you've got nice tart apples. Instead of white sugar, try using brown sugar. It goes more syrupy when it melts, thus not causing so much excess moisture.

Another way to cook an apple pie is to stew the apples first and thicken with regular flour or cornflour. The only problem with cornflour as a thickener in this process is that once it's re-cooked, it loses some of it's thickening power, so if possible, either reduce the liquid content in the apples, then the thickening is only required for the smallest amount of moisture, or get prebaked pie crust so that you can simply add the apple mixture, then put a crust on top and then grill it. That way you don't reheat the whole inside of the pie. Just the top.

All in all though, I think you'll find the brown sugar the way to go. Because it's less refined, it's sweeter and you need less anyway, thus less moisture.

Not a cheap shot! And brown sugar is? In USA, just sugar with molasses added for color.

use real dough (very easy) and blind bake the crust. precook the apples, then put apples in pie, add top and bob's your uncle jim. So simple a 10 year old can do it. In fact, our 10-year-old does. That's one of her "jobs".

oh and leave out the cinnamon because it's nasty.

you seriously don't have brown sugar? wow. I'll see if I can find some info on it. You must have brown sugar. how else do you make a propper creme brulee?

OK, this is what wiki had to say about brown sugar. Molasses can be added, or it can be retained in the less refined sugar (which is the way we get it here) rather than it being added to white sugar which is obviously what you're talking about.

Anyway, that was interesting. I don't know if the type of brown sugar you're likely to get over there is the same as what we have here. It's more like castor sugar and is quite dark. You can get light brown sugar here too, but I prefer the dark for cooking with. It's what I use if I want to do a flambe with fruit. Chopped up fruit, brown sugar and butter onto a hot pan all at once and cook quickly till the sugar is disolved and the pan starts to smoke slightly.

depends where you shop, Ali

cinnamon isn't nasty! but I'm addicted to pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, nutmeg & ginger). Spices are good for you!

Sorry Ali, but you are misleading the non Aussies.

Brown Sugar ONLY comes with molasses added, its usually more refined than white sugar, because the molasses is added to fully refined white sugar, the white sugar can be partially refined...but as a general rule, its refined and naturally moist and clumping because of the molasses content.

Now, if you are referring to RAW Sugar, or Natural Sugar crystals...different story. Its basically pure because its produced from the first crystallisation.

What's wrong with cinnamon? I even add it to my spaghetti sauce!

No I'm not Ducks. At organic grocers and some 'coles' stores you can get a true brown sugar which is also known as Muscovado sugar. It is the ideal type of brown sugar for cooking with if you can get it which as it happens is what I use. I just didn't realize there was a difference in the way they're manufactured.

Yes you can use the ordinary brown sugar that is more common in the shops which is of course what bb was talking about because that is manufactured using the process he mentioned.

Muscovado is basically a specialist sugar, and not typical brown sugar.

yeah I know. I buy it from the deli where I get other special stuff like pure vanilla instead of vanilla essence etc. I just never realized there was a difference in how brown sugar that you get from the supermarket and the stuff I get from the deli are made. I just know the one from the deli is nicer for cooking with.

I've learned something because of this thread I guess.

We have fancy brown sugar here too... even walmart carries different varieties ie. raw sugar, sucanet, turbinado, evaporated cane juice etc...

we get piloncillo here--Mexican dark brown sugar, which comes in unwrapped cones. But I don't think the sugar used has anything to do with the outcome of the pie.

is that like palm sugar? That's something even different again too isn't it?

I think it's cane sugar. You can get sugar from different plants--cane, beets, etc. I'm not too familiar with palm sugar.

palm sugar is used in a lot of asian cooking. It's very very sweet. You have to grate it. I'm guessing it comes from some kind of palm, but I don't know for sure.

Maybe I'll have to do a bit more research. ;)

There we go. We've sorted out another kind of 'sugar'. :)

good thing I'm not concerned with frugivory!

interesting. I'll have to look for that.

Grated palm sugar is awesome.

yeah...my fathers wife make 'sticky rice' with it which I like, but apparently it's a poor persons desert. If that's the case, rich people are stupid is all I can say.

white rice has very little nutritional value. But I used to like maple syrup on it as a kid; and I love rice pudding!

I put sugar and cinnamon on my sticky white rice. Or used to. My hubby doesn't like white rice, so we mostly do long grain wild rice.

Cloud, rice of any kind including white (in particular) is high in carbohydrates and it's also got a good helping of fibre. It also has protien and some B vitamins. That's a big part of the reason why some people manage to subsist on rice alone.

I think they put those B vitamins in there by fortifying it. I love white rice, and tho' brown rice has more fiber and more nutrition . . . I can't like it much.

Yeah, brown rice has 3X the fiber, which you generally need much more than the sprayed on vitamins in white rice.

We have pretty comprehensive food labeling laws in Australia and I've just looked on two different packets of rice in the cupboard and the only ingredient listed is rice.

I don't know if maybe vitamins are added for US consumers, and it's possible there are brands with vitamin additives available here, but you can certainly purchase rice with no additives what so ever here.

Apple pie, anyone?

Yes we do too have brown sugar, and Demerara sugar too. It is, or was, a quirk of US sugar laws that raw sugar is supposed to be refined to pure sugar and then have molasses whipped back in to make brown sugar.

I used to do that with our kitchen blender. I do it less nowadays. If you figure you need your brown sugar to get darker brown, blend in another tablespoon (15ml) of molasses to a cup of the stuff. Very molasses-laden brown sugar should be kept in a tight container.