Apple Pie

John's been whimpering for an Apple Pie for a couple of months now, so I figured, being it's Father's Day, I'd make him one. He's currently hovering in the kitchen, sniffing the air like an old Bloodhound and drooling. (OK, he's not REALLY drooling...but this pie does smell awesome baking!)

Pies are not my forte, but this recipe has so many thousands of rave reviews on allrecipes.com I had to give it a try. Thankfully I didn't have to make the crust from scratch...I used the Pillsbury refrigerated ones instead.

Grandma Ople's Apple Pie

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
1/2 cup butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
8 apples - peeled, cored and thinly sliced and tossed with 2 tsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour. Add water, white sugar,brown sugar, and spices and bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and let simmer.

Place the bottom crust in your pie pan. Pour all but about 1/4 cup of the sugar syrup over the apples and stir until they are well coated. Mound the apples in the pie crust. Cover with the second crust and cut a few slits in the top. Gently pour the remaining sugar syrup over the crust and spread around the top.

Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes, until apples are soft.

Please note that I made some changes in this recipe. The original calls for a lattice top (I Don't Do Lattice!) and no spices at all. I can't see the point in an apple pie without any cinnamon so I added that and some cloves and nutmeg just for the heck of it. The original also says to use Granny Smith apples, which I didn't have, so I added some lemon juice to my plain old whatever-kind-of-apples-these-are as they seemed a little sweet to me. I probably ate at least half of one of those 8 apples while I was cutting them up, so there's less in my pie than called for. And, last but not least, I was supposed to pour ALL of the sugar syrup over the top of the lattice covered pie, but that sounded like a mess waiting to happen!

This was good, but not as great as all the reviews led me to believe it would be.