Early this week I attended a local early Thanksgiving dinner for volunteers and brought two pies to the event. You can see my beautiful Maple Pumpkin Pie recipe by clicking the link. Here is the recipe and photos for what I found to be the absolute BEST apple pie I have ever eaten. I thank the Clark family for passing on their tried-and-true recipe for me to try out.

This was the first time I’d attempted a lattice pie top and I simply layered the strips in perpendicular directions. I later realized I should have weaved/intertwined them but there’s always a next time plus it didn’t really matter. I used all four kinds of apples as I noted at the bottom of the recipe. This helped add a little variety to the pie, just make sure you mix them all up together. This was perfectly sweet but not cloying and the apples still had a subtle crunch to them so they didn’t become mush. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Classic Apple Pie

Recipe from: Betty Crocker and The Clark Family

Makes a 9″ pie

Ingredients:

• Pastry for deep 9″ two-crust pie
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour (if using self-rising flour, omit salt)
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• Dash of salt
• 4-5 cups thinly sliced, peeled tart apples (4-5 medium apples) (For deep-dish pie crust use 6 apples)*
• 2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
• Optional: Egg wash of 1 egg white and 1 Tbsp. water and coarse/sanding sugar

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 425°F. Prepare pastry. In large bowl, mix sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Stir in apples. Spoon into pastry-lined pie plate; dot with butter or margarine.

2. Cover with top crust that has slits cut in it. Seal and flute. Or do as we did and slice top pie crust on floured surface into 1″ wide strips and weave as a lattice top, seal and flute edges to stick to bottom pie crust edges. If desired, brush the top of the pie crust with an egg wash and dust with the sugar. Cover edge with 2- to 3-inch strip of aluminum foil; remove foil during last 15 minutes of baking.

3. Bake until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust, 40 to 50 minutes. Serve warm if desired with vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream.

*APPLE VARIETY TIP: For a great apple pie, use a combination of these apples which are best for a not-too-sweet but not-too-tart pie: Golden Delicious, Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, and Braeburn.