Apple Pie with Spiced Caramel Recipe

For the Pie Crust 

1. In a medium sized bowl, add flour, sugar and salt and whisk together to combine.
2. Next add your butter cubes to flour and using your pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour mixture until various sized crumbs appear.
3. Start with ¼ cup of cold water and slowly add the flour until a ball of dough forms. Knead the dough quickly to bring it together. Don’t worry if there is any flour left in the bowl.
4. Remove the dough from the bowl and roll into a ball. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30-45 minutes to rest.

For the Apples 

1. Start on the apple pie filling, by peeling and coring the apples. Thinly slice until you have 8 cups of apples. Add both sugars, lemon juice, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg to a large bowl and toss to mix everything together.  Let the pie filling sit out at room temp for about an hour. It might look like a lot of apples, but don’t worry! It’ll shrink down and all of it will fit the pie.

For the Crumble 

1. Add flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt to a medium sized bowl and toss together making sure to break up everything.  Stir together the butter and vanilla in a separate small bowl and pour over the dry ingredients.  Toss everything together until crumbs develop then cover and refrigerate.
2. Once the dough has rested, remove the dough from the fridge and lightly flour the surface.  Roll out your dough, wrap around a rolling pin and transfer to a greased and floured 9 inch pie plate.  Fit to the plate then flute the edges to your liking then add back in the freezer for 20 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Remove the crust from the freezer and line with parchment covering the edges and fill with pie weights to just the level.  Bake pie for about 15 minutes then remove from the oven and remove the pie weights.  Gently prink the bottom and sides of the crust with a fork several times and bake for another 8-10 minutes then remove and cool on a wire rack.  Reduce the temperature of the oven to 375.

To finish Apples and Assemble 

1. Next take the apple filling that’s been sitting and drain the liquid in the filling into a liquid measuring cup up to ½ cup. Make sure to gently press the apples down so you get the liquid. Pour the liquid into a medium saucepan. The apples should be left in the bowl.
2. Add the cornstarch to the apples and toss together to coat then set aside.
3. Over high heat, reduce the liquid in the saucepan to about a 1/3 cup.  Takes about 4-6 minutes.  Do light swirling during this then remove.
4. Pour the reduced apple liquid over the fruit and stir everything together.
5. Layer the apples over the prebaked pie crust, spreading them out and pressing the slices down.
6. Finally remove the crumble from the fridge and break up crumbles with a fork. Liberally sprinkle on top of the apples leaving the baked pie crust bare.
7. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until the apples are tender when poked and pierced with a fork.  To make sure your pie crust doesn’t overbrown, cover with foil or a pie crust shield.

Let cool to room temperature and then serve warm with caramel below and vanilla ice cream of course.

For the Spiced Caramel 

1. Melt butter in a saucepan.
2. Add brown sugar, heavy cream, vanilla extract and cinnamon and whisk constantly over medium heat until sugar is dissolved.
3. Bring to a boil and allow to boil for 3-4 minutes. Don’t go over that time.
4. Remove from heat, stir in a pinch of salt and allow to cool. Serve with pie.