Ultimate kitchen hacks: Apple pie from scratch

You’ll scratch something, at least

By Caroline Ho, Web Editor

Ah, a good flaky, tender, delicately cinnamon-y homemade pie, fresh from the oven. What could be a more classic sign of the autumn times? What aroma could better fill your kitchen with that distinctively buttery, perfectly spiced fragrance? What better screams “I know how to bake, I am a capable and fully-functioning adult, I can feed myself and moving out was NOT A MISTAKE MOM,” than made-from-scratch pie?

Without further ado, here is an apple pie recipe that is absolutely, a hundred percent guaranteed to impress your friends, family, and two Instagram followers—who may or may not be bots. Unless you screw it up horribly, in which case they’ll probably make fun of you even more than that one time you set the waffle iron on fire. Bake at your own emotional peril.

Cooking time: You never actually read this line, so who cares?

Serves: However many family members are still brave enough to try your food

Ingredients:

For the crust:

1-¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick) butter

4 tbsp cold water

1 cup misplaced self-confidence

For the apple filling:

6 tart apples

½ cup sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

150 g longing for the childhood you never had

Instructions

1. Start with the pie crust. You’d always thought they were complicated, but with so few ingredients it’s bound to be super simple, right? Easy as pie!
2. Chuckle at your pun for the next three minutes.
3. Mix flour and salt into a large bowl, then cut in the cold butter with a couple of forks until it—
4. Wait, your butter’s not cold? You’re one of those heathens who keeps it on the counter? Eew. Oh well, I’m sure it’s fine. Cut it into the flour until butter’s kind of pea-shaped and the mixture’s kind of crumbly, like your fragile self-esteem.
5. Dump in cold water and half-heartedly poke at the mix with a spoon until it looks sufficiently doughy.
6. Chuckle at the word “doughy” for approximately 30 seconds. Then remember that some mean kid called you doughy in second grade. I wonder what she’s doing nowadays? Resist the urge to look her up on Facebook.
7. Split your dough into two relatively even lumps and squish them into disks. Wrap both disks in plastic wrap and stick in the fridge for at least an hour.
8. Meanwhile, time to start on the filling! Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. Except now you’re hungry, so feel free to snack on an apple or two.
9. Oh gosh, too tart, TOO TART! Compensate by shoving whole tablespoons of sugar into your mouth.
10. Now you’re short on apples and sugar. The obvious solution is to quadruple the rest of the filling ingredients. Mix apples, sugar, and unholy quantities of lemon juice/cinnamon/nutmeg into a bowl.
11. Has it been an hour yet? Only 10 minutes? Oh well, I’m sure it doesn’t actually make a difference, plus you’re kind of in a hurry to get to your family gathering. Take a dough disk out of the fridge and roll it out on a floured surface—
12. Wait, you don’t own a rolling pin. What are you, some kind of professional chef? Just use a half-empty wine bottle instead, you pleb.
13. Might as well finish that wine first though!
14. Roll out dough, slightly intoxicated (you, not the dough), into a circle about a third of a centimetre thick and press into a pie plate.
15. Except you don’t own one of those either. All right, rectangular loaf pan it is. It’ll be like a lasagna. Anyway, squish that sucker down just like Dad squished your hopes of going to culinary school.
16. Fill with your prepared apple mixture, assuming you haven’t eaten the rest of it yet, then roll out the second dough disk.
17. Better crack open a new bottle of wine while you’re at it.
18. Drape the second crust over the filling, like tucking in a blanket, or like how you toss pants from your pile of clothes on your chair onto your pile of clothes on your bed. Stab that top crust a few times with a fork to give it some air and show it who’s boss.
19. We’re almost done! Next—egg wash?! That wasn’t in the ingredients list, plus you don’t have time for that! Just crack a whole egg on top, shell bits and all.
20. Okay, now toss your questionably shaped, under-stuffed pie-lasagna into the preheated to 375°F oven—whoops, did no one mention preheating the oven? Aw crap, your family gathering’s in half an hour, we don’t have time for this. Just turn the temperature to 750°F and pop it in.
21. Sit in front of the oven impatiently for the next 25 minutes, sipping straight from your open bottle of wine, as the aroma in your kitchen slowly shifts from homey, heartwarming butteriness to moderately hazardous burning.
22. Carefully remove your lovingly crafted, artisanal delight from the oven. Uhh. At least it’s “creative?” Your Mom described all of your art projects in elementary school this way, so it’s probably good.
23. Aw, screw it. Just bring half a bottle of wine to the family gathering instead.