Tuesday, October 7, 2014

What's Cooking?

Destiny's Homemade Apple Pie:
  
Pre-Heat oven to 350 degrees

Crust:
 You will need the following:
1 1/3 cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
4 ounces stick butter
3 to 5 tablespoons ice water
Mix the flour, salt, butter, and water together. Knead it nicely until it is able to roll. Sprinkle some flour on the counter and on your roller. Roll out the dough (crust). Place in the bottom of the pie pan. Make sure the crust comes up on the sides of the pan. Bake pie crust at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Then begin the inside of the pie.

Inside of the Pie:
You will need the following:
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¾ cup flour
½ cup cold stick butter
About 6-8 apples of your choice
Cut the apples into thin slices. Put in the pan with the pie crust. Mix the sugar, cinnamon, and flour together. Sprinkle over the top of the apples. Cut the butter up into slices and place randomly over the top of the apples. Bake this at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Then begin your top crust or crumbles.

Top Crust/Crumbles:
You will need the following:
¾ cup flour
½ cup sugar
½ cup stick butter
Mix the flour and sugar together. Cut the butter into the mixture of flour and sugar. You may need to use your hands to crumble the mixture. Put in the refrigerator until pie is done baking. When the pie is done, put the crumble on the pie. Bake at 500 degrees for about 20 minutes or until brown and juice is boiling.
When pie is done baking, remove from oven and let cool for 20 minutes. Enjoy your homemade apple pie!

The Story Behind:
I’ve always like apple pie. It's my favorite dessert. While I was in high school, I decided one night during the weekend I wanted to make one. I had never made one before, but I was craving it. May I remind you that it was about 11 o’clock at night. Crazy, I know. I googled how to make your own crust and how to make the inside of the pie. I came across this recipe. I went to the kitchen and looked to see if I had all the ingredients; I did. So I began to make it. Over time I’ve spiced up the recipe by adding some touches of my own. That evening I was up till about 12:30 making this pie. It turned out marvelous! I still make this all the time. The first time I made it for my fiancé it was gone within one day and he asked me to make another one. Silly me, I did. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do. 
  
Description:

Well to begin I pre-heated my oven to 350 degrees and started making my flaky crust. I combined all the ingredients to make my crust starting with the flour. As I was pouring the flour into my glass bowl the flour left a cloud of white dust in the air, making me cough. I put the salt in and started kneading in the cold but soft butter. After kneading all the ingredients in some, I started to put the ice cold water in the bowl to help finish kneading the dough. After kneading the light tan dough for a while, I could smell the oven warming up. You know that smell when there is burned food at the bottom of the oven? Yeah, that unpleasant smell. The one where you can taste the burnt food in your mouth from the air. I continued to finish my crust by sprinkling some flour on my hard counter and rolling pin. I pulled the dough out of the bowl and started to roll it onto the counter in a round shape. I kept having problems, because the dough kept breaking in places where I had gotten it too thin, so I had to keep restarting the rolling process. Finally, I got the pie crust perfect and just needed to lay it in the pie pan. I laid it in the pie pan and started to press the mushy sides of the dough up to the glass edges. I then placed the dish inside the oven to bake for 15 minutes. As I opened the oven a big gush of heat wave rushed to my face. I started to sweat. I quickly closed the oven and started on the inside of the pie. On the inside of the pie, I combined all the ingredients except for the butter. As I was mixing the sugar and cinnamon together with the flour I could taste the sweetness in my mouth. Oh, how I couldn’t wait to eat the pie. This is the most drooling step of them all, cutting up the apples and smelling the sugar and cinnamon. After mixing all the dry ingredients together I started to cut the apples up. I decided this time I wanted to use green apples. I don’t know why, I just felt it would taste good. I had never used green apples before in this pie. I pulled the apples out of the refrigerator. To the touch the apples felt cool, not too cold like the freezer but not room temperature. You don’t peel the apples to make this pie, but you do cut them. I started cutting the apples on my cutting board with this very sharp and new paring knife. These apples were pretty decent size so I only cut up about six apples, cutting them thinly and cutting out the core of the apples. The core is where those nasty black seeds are. I swear every time I eat an apple I always inhale a seed. I can’t stand it. By the time I had my apples cut and my ingredients mixed together my pie crust was done. I could hear beep-beep-beep from the oven timer. So I went over to the oven and started to pull the pie crust out. As I started to pull the pan out, I quickly realized I had no oven mitts on. This is because I burnt the crap out of my hand. I now was running cool water over my sizzling burnt skin. I then put oven mitts on and finished pulling my pie crust out of the oven before it started to burn. I set the pan on the counter and reset the oven temperature to 400 degrees. I started to put the fresh cut apples into the pie crust. I sprinkled the ingredients I had previously mixed on top of the apples and again the smell of the sweetness was oh so good. I took out my yellow gooey butter and cut it into medium slices and placed them randomly on top of the apples. I was now ready to place in the oven again. This time using my oven mitts, which smelt like BBQ from my fiancé using them on the grill. I placed the pie pan in the oven to cook for 35 minutes. I decided I would start on my top crust, which I like to do crumbles. I combined the flour and sugar in bowl. Then, I cut the butter into the mixture. Making it crumbly. I did this by using my hands. I’ve found this is the easiest thing to do. Plus, who doesn’t like to get messy while cooking? It’s the most fun part of cooking. You get to feel each ingredient in between your fingers. This always reminds me of the play putty you play with growing up. The soft but thin filmy feeling on your hands. I placed in the refrigerator until the pie was done baking. I started to clean up, because I knew I needed to start after dirtying all them dishes or I’d never get them done. As I was hand washing each dish in the warm soapy water, I could smell the sweet smell of the pie in the process of baking. I wished I could take it out of the oven and eat it already. It smelled like heaven. Like when you go home to your mom’s home cooking. I could hear the butter sizzling in between the apples, juicing and bubbling up. As I was finishing the dishes and placing the last dish in the drying rack the oven signaled once again that the pie was ready to be taken out. I put on my oven mitts and proceeded to take the pie out. It looked so amazing. I reset the oven to 500 degrees. I then realized that the pie is close to being done. Setting that oven to 500 degrees always makes me realize this. I took the crumble crust out of the refrigerator and scooped them onto the top of the pie. It looked almost complete. I placed the pie into the oven for the last time and set the timer for 20 minutes. As I was anxiously waiting for the pie to be done I started to get the cooling racks out along with plates and silverware. I was so ready to tear into this pie. I sat down on what seemed like a cloud but was actually a couch to relax after spending about an hour in the kitchen. The aromas from the kitchen were seeping into the living room making my mouth water. About 15 minutes had past, so I went to check on the pie. As I opened the oven I could see the top of the pie looking golden brown and the juice was boiling. I knew right then that it was time. The pie was done! I pulled the pie out and sat it on the cooling racks to cool off. I could feel the heat through my oven mitts. I turned off the oven and proceeded to wait another 20 minutes until the pie was cool enough to eat. 20 minutes past and I cut into the pie, cutting two slices one for Jon (my fiancé) and one for myself. I took the first bite. In the bite I could taste the sweet taste from the sugar, cinnamon, and of course the apples. The apples were warm and so soft and chewable. Too bad we didn’t have any ice cream or that would have made it perfect. After devouring our slice of apple pie or bellies felt full and content. Now it was Jon’s turn to clean up.
Below is a picture of this pie!

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