I am not new to pie baking. Rhubarb cream pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate pie, lemon meringue pie, mud pie. I’ve made them all. So I was shocked when my son pointed out that I had never made an apple pie.
Shocked. Appalled.
Worse, my son didn’t remember ever eating apple pie, mine or otherwise (though he did, and didn’t particularly like it). Could he even call himself American?
And the very worst, I grew up in the heart of apple country (the famed Honeycrisp Apple was developed in orchards around Lake City, Minnesota, the town my parents grew up in). Which is also pie country. Minnesota is the kind of place where churches host annual pie auctions to raise money. And the requirement for entering something at the county fair was bringing two pies to sell at the 4-H lunch counter. (A dollar per slice, plus twenty-five cents for a scoop of ice cream.)
I’ve written about pie—in both my novel-in-progress and my short story “SENESCENCE.” But those pies weren’t apple, either. Why?
And then I remembered. I never had to make apple pie. Because there was always a pie, or 12, in my parents’ freezer, waiting to be thawed when we went back to visit.
Field Notes
Number of Pies
My parents: Nineteen apple pies baked in one day is the record for my parents. And they might have made more if they hadn’t run out of pie tins. They had help: my maternal grandparents, who had been farmers and understood the dilemma. How else were you going to use up the apples from your pie-apple trees?
—Pie apples aren’t great for eating, just baking.
—You can’t give them all away. There’s already a glut of free apples in Minnesota in the fall.
—You can’t let them rot. That’s just disrespecting the trees.
And with winter coming, an apple pie (or 19, minus 4 stepped on) would be a welcome treat on a dark, cold Minnesota evening. This is especially true in a pandemic, FYI. My parents were way ahead of their time.
Me: Nineteen pies takes about 115 pounds of apples. I decided to make just 1.
The Crust
My parents: Growing up, there were 3 recipes in our recipe box.
1. Pie Crust: flour, salt, Crisco, ice water
2. Good Pie Crust: flour, salt, Crisco, ice water, and vinegar
3. Fancy Pie Crust: flour, salt, Crisco, ice water, vinegar, and egg
Several years ago, my mother switched to using the Good Pie Crust almost exclusively, because it was more tender than just the Pie Crust. She never refrigerates her dough, going straight from mixing to rolling to baking. Pie on demand.
Me: I’m gluten free as of a few years ago, so my crust options were limited. Gluten-free pie crust is tricky and when you find one that you can actually roll out, you stick with it. That said, as a person who works on cookbooks, I’ve seen a lot of pie crust recipes. Most require special equipment, multiple refrigeration steps, and lots of advance preparation. In other words: pie in the distant future.
My recipe called for 1 refrigeration, which I honored. It also called for freezing the butter for 30 minutes, which I ignored. Pie crust rebellion.
The Apples
My parents: When I asked if they’d ever used apples from the grocery store, the answer was a flat, semi-disgusted “No.” My grandparents had 20 apple trees on their farm, so that was my parents’ apple source until my grandparents sold the farm. After that my parents got apples from friends (who weren’t interested in spending a day baking and freezing pies). When we moved to a house with a yard big enough to plant an apple tree, that tree became the source. And the source of those 19 pies.
Me: When you don’t have a pie-apple tree, you have to work with the apples from the supermarket. Most grocery store apples are meant for eating not baking. In California, the apple selection is particularly limited (not a big apple state). My Joy of Cooking edition (1997) recommended Golden Delicious, so that’s what I went with, though even those can be difficult to find.
The Filling
My parents (basic version): Peel the apples. Slice the apples off the core directly into the prepared pie tin. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
My parents (fancy version): Peel the apples. Slice half the apples off the core directly into the prepared pie tin. Sprinkle with half the sugar and cinnamon. Slice in the remaining apples. Add the remaining sugar and cinnamon.
Me: I own a fair amount of cookbooks, and only one of them had a basic apple pie recipe: apples, sugar, cinnamon. That was the one I used. My Joy of Cooking had the next most basic—Apple Pie I and Apple Pie II. But the first required the apples to sit for 15 minutes with the sugar before filling the pie plate. It also demanded that the pie be cooled entirely, for 3 to 4 hours, and then reheated for 15 minutes in the oven if I wanted to serve the pie warm. The second recipe had me cook the filling first. The rest of the apple pie recipes I found were variations of apple pie: Dutch apple pie, sour cream apple pie, caramel apple pie, etc.
Number of Dishes/Tools Used
My parents: 8
—6 for the crust: 1 fork, 1 bowl, 2 measuring cups, 1 measuring spoon, 1 rolling pin.
—2 for the filling: 1 apple peeler, 1 knife (though after they bought the all-in-one peeler/slicer, they no longer needed the knife). You could also include masking tape here (see Pie Assembly, below).
Me: 18
—10 for the crust: 1 food processor, 2 bowls, 1 kitchen scale, 1 knife, 3 measuring spoons, 1 measuring cup, 1 rolling pin.
—8 for the filling: 1 peeler, 1 apple corer, 1 knife, 1 cutting board, 1 bowl, 2 measuring spoons, 1 measuring cup.
I think you can guess who’s cleanup takes longer.
Pie Assembly
My parents: My father was in charge of peeling apples and sugar/cinnamon distribution. My mother was in charge of crusts and apple placement. By the time my parents made their record 19 pies, they had discovered the all-in-one apple peeler/slicer, a device that peels, cores, and slices the apples all in a turn of a crank. Before that, my dad peeled the apples by hand. He wrapped his fingers in masking tape to cut down on the blisters.
Me: It was a one-man job. My kids were in school Zoom sessions. My husband was at work.
Baking
My parents: They could fit 3 or 4 pies in the oven at once. At approximately 45 minutes a batch, that’s 4.5 hours of baking time.
Me: 1 pie, middle rack, 50 minutes.
Cooling
My parents: Pies take a long time to cool. When you make 19, you run out of cooling racks, not to mention counter space. Solution? Lay some bedsheets on the carpet in the living room, and cool the pies on those. What could go wrong?
Me: Cooling rack, safely on the counter.
Pie Stepping
My parents: My grandfather, presumably delirious after baking pies all day, came in from outside and forgot that there were pies covering the living room floor. He stepped in one, lost his balance, stepped in another, and essentially went from pie to pie to pie, destroying 4 before he exited the minefield.
And then, rather than stopping on one of the bedsheets, he walked his pie shoes across the living room carpet and into the kitchen.
And then, later, my grandmother, who was as loathe to waste apple pies as she was pie apples, ate one of the destroyed pies.
Me: No pie stepping, although I’m sure my kids would’ve enjoyed it.
Storing
My parents: They own a giant chest freezer, which comfortably fits (what became) 15 pies. It also fits all the frozen vegetables my parents process from their vegetable garden, my dad’s catches of goose, pheasant, duck, and fish from his hunting and fishing, and some years, half a hog from their excellent butcher.
But pre–chest freezer, my parents used my godparents’ freezer. My godparents let them store pies in there, and my parents let them eat some of those pies. It’s the kind of friendship all of us should strive for.
Me: Room temp.
Lessons Learned
Supermarket apples don’t taste as good as Minnesota pie apples.
My son didn’t love my apple pie. But I feel he got a poor representation of one. People say pies are all about the crust, but with apple, I think it’s about the filling. The Golden Delicious were bland, despite my attempts at tarting them up with citric acid and lemon. Maybe next time I would try a combination of apples. Or maybe next time I’d just fly back to Minnesota.
Crusts don’t have to take all day.
My mom’s no-refrigeration crust method has always produced amazing pies. In fact, in a state that knows pies, my mom is known for her pie crust. Her lemon meringue pie went for $80 at her church pie auction.
Waste not, want not.
My parents were taught not to waste anything. And then you’re rewarded by still having plenty if/when the future doesn’t go as planned. Up until recently, our futures have been pretty consistently rosy and dependable. The pandemic has changed that. There were definitely things I regretted wasting—toilet paper, tissues, hand soap.
Simplify.
In the beginning of the pandemic, people took advantage of the time at home to make elaborate dishes: bread from scratch, complex recipes that cooked all day. But even the most avid cooks have tired of the endless time in the kitchen—and the endless dishes—and are embracing simpler preparations. Instead of making the perfect recipe, maybe it’s better to skip the refrigerations and complications and use the extra time on stressed-out loved ones or our own stressed-out selves.
In Other Words . . .
Expect the unexpected.
Prepare for the unexpected.
Spend less time making the pie.
Spend more time with the people you’re sharing it with.
All good fodder for fiction.
Afterward
The tree that sourced the apples for those 19 pies died, and that ended my parents multitudinous pie baking. Even when they moved to a new house, which serendipitously had two apple trees—one with good eating apples and one with good baking apples—they didn’t go back to pies. But don’t worry. They still don’t let those apples go to waste. Now they simply freeze the apples in batches, raw, with cinnamon and sugar. And instead of using those apples to fill pies, they use them for apple crisp. “It’s easier,” my dad said. “And better for us.” Brilliant.
