eat my apple pie

Preheat the oven to 350°F and prepare a double 9" pie crust recipe (or use frozen crusts). Line a pie plate with the bottom crust and refrigerate while you prepare the filling.

Squeeze the lemon into a bowl of cold water and keep the apples in it while you slice to prevent browning. Peel, core, and slice the apples about 1/4″ to 1/2″ thin, submerging in the lemon water every chance you get.

Slice the apples in whatever way makes you happy, but you could try peeling, halving, and coring all of the apples, then slicing the halves all at once. Rest each apple half on its flat edge to provide stability while you slice from side-to-side (instead of stem-to-blossom end). This gives you thin, mostly c-shaped slices that cook down perfectly inside of a pie.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the flour, salt, sugar, lemon zest, and spices. Drain the apples and add them to the flour mixture, mixing quickly to coat the wet apples with an evenly distributed amount of dry ingredients.

Fetch your pie plate from the fridge and fill with the apples. Pile them up in the middle, tapering off like a flat volcano to the sides of the plate. Place the butter slices on top of the filling and set the pie aside.

Roll out your top crust and cover the apples. Trim and seal the two crusts (crude directions in the pie crust recipe), cut some vents in the top to let steam escape, and bake at 350°F for 40-50 minutes, until the crust is golden and the fruit starts bubbling like crazy through the vents.

Let the pie cool on a rack until it’s just warm, so the filling has a chance to thicken and set a little bit before you slice it up.

I keep leftover pie on the kitchen counter so we don't forget about it. You should refrigerate yours, of course.