Apple Pie

Ahh!  I can not, for the life of me, find my camera battery charger.  So no pics, unfortunately.  Anyway since Thanksgiving is not a Danish holiday (obviously) but I am an American, I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner here tonight for my host dad’s birthday.  I’m excited, this is the first Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever planned and executed myself.  Yesterday to prepare I made an apple pie (recipe below,) a pumpkin cheesecake (recipe tomorrow or later tonight if I don’t pass out after all that turkey dinner,) and my grandma’s cranberry glop. As soon as my host mom is done baking birthday buns (a Danish birthday tradition) I’ll be plopping the turkey in the oven and starting on some mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, and gravy.  I’ll post all those recipes over the next week prior to Thanksgiving actually showing up.  Anyway here’s my apple pie recipe:

Apple Pie Filling

Ingredients:

• 6 large green apples, peeled and sliced
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• 1.5 dl/0.75 cup white sugar
• 1 dl/ 0.5 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp flour (if the mixture is a bit liquid)
• a couple shakes of cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or clove to taste
• 2-3 tsp butter

Mix:

1. In a large bowl, coat the apples everything but the butter, adding the flour last if there is liquid at the bottom of the bowl.
2. Pour into pie crust (recipe below) and top with a couple tsp butter placed randomly to melt as it bakes.

Apple Pie Crust:

Ingredients:

• 450g/3.5 cups all purpose flour
• a pinch of salt
• 2 dl/1 cup vegetable shortening
• 1 dl/0.5 cup cool water

Cook:

1. Preheat oven to 180’C/375’F.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the flour and salt to remove any lumps.
3. Put the shortening in the middle of the bowl, coat  your hands with flour in order to minimize contact with the shortening (we don’t want it to melt) and work the flour into it.  This might take a while (and it might help to chop the shortening up a bit first,) but just keep pressing the flour into the shortening until they are one.
4. Add the water and work the dough into a ball.  Don’t knead it- the least amount of contact is still best.  Add more water by the tbsp if more is needed to keep a ball shape.
5. Cut the ball in half and roll it out to line your pie pan.  If you can’t roll out a full flat bit, cut that in half and piece it together (thats how I do it.)  Add the pie filling.
6. For the top, I prefer to roll out the remaining dough, cut it into strips, and weave the top.  This is because I cannot roll out a flat pie top.  If you can roll out a flat pie top, feel free to do so, just make sure to fork it a bit so the air can escape once it’s pinched on.
7. Brush the top with cream or milk and dust with sugar and/or cinnamon.
8. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

Yum!

-Ariel

Apple-Cinnamon Pound Cake

Last night my host-dad’s mother came over after doing some hardcore apple picking in the afternoon.  We now have two large bowls of apples in the kitchen.  I already had plans for dinner (Jewish-Thai Fusion, I’ll blog about it once I see how it comes out) so I decided to make an apple-based dessert.  The kids I watch will eat anything in cake or cookie form, so that was my jumping off point.

Apple-Cinnamon Pound Cake

For this recipe I used a bundt cake pan.  Also please note that I am fully aware of the fact that my conversions between the US system and the metric system are not exact.  This hasn’t caused me any problems yet.

Ingredients  (Filling)

1. Three average-to-large peeled then grated apples (drain or squeeze out excess juice)
2. Brown sugar (enough to cover the apples)
3. A couple shakes of cinnamon (add nutmeg and/or clove as well, for more spice if you like)
4. Lemon juice (half a lemon/a couple squirts from the lemon juice thing)
5. Flour (enough to thicken the mixture)
6. A small handful of oatmeal

Ingredients (Cake)

1. 2 sticks of margarine/250g container of margerine
2. 8oz package of cream cheese/200g container of cream cheese
3. 1.5 cups sugar/300g sugar
4. 4 eggs
5. 2 tsp vanilla extract
6. 1-2 tsp cinnamon
7. 1.5 tsp baking powder
8. 2.25 cups flour/290g flour
9. Raisins and/or pecans/walnuts

Bake

1. Pre-heat oven to 325’F/160’C
2. Butter and flour the bundt pan
3. Peel and grate the apples.
4. In a medium bowl, mix the apples, lemon juice, enough brown sugar to lightly coat the apples, spices, and a couple tsp of flour to thicken the mixture and hold it together.  Ignore the oatmeal for now.
5. In a large bowl, mix the cake ingredients in one-at-a-time, in the order they are listed.  Mix after putting each individual food-item in bowl.  I use a fork or a whisk to do this, though if you prefer it thicker use a food processor.
6. Add half the cake batter to the pan, layer with about 2/3 of the filling, smooth, add the rest of the cake batter, top with remaining filling.  Sprinkle the oatmeal on top to give it a bit of a crunch.  Lightly pat the topping into the batter so that it sets.
7. Bake for 60-70 minutes.

Personally, I enjoy lightly grilling or toasting (in a toaster oven) a slice of this cake and eating it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.  Yum =]

-Ariel