My Mother's Apple Pie

Everyone always loved my mother's apple pie and so she made lots of them. Her great pies were something she was known for and apple pies were her best. I have her recipe on a card in her handwriting but it is getting pretty tattered and so to make sure that I don't lose it someday I am adding mom's recipe to the blog. My mother, Leona Felder, passed away 8 years ago at age 95, but her cooking lives on in the memories of her friends and family.

Apple Pie
Pastry for double crust 9" pie,
6 large Gravenstein apples. About 8 cups cut-up apples. If Gravensteins are not available use another tart cooking apple such as Pippins or Mutsus
1 cup sugar  (I reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup)
2 tablespoons flour (you may substitute 2 1/2 to 3 tablespoons tapioca)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter, more if desired
Preheat the oven to 450ºF. Peel and chop the apples. Mix the sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Roll out the bottom crust and place it into the pan leaving slightly wider than the rim. Sprinkle about half of the sugar mixture into the bottom. Pile in the apples. Sprinkle with the lemon juice. Top with the rest of the sugar mixture. Dot with butter. Roll out the top crust large enough that it overlaps the bottom crust. Trim, fold under the edge of the crust and crimp the edges. Cut some slits in the crust to allow steam to escape as the apples cook. Sprinkle a little sugar over the crust. Bake at 450ºF for 15 minutes and then turn the oven down to 350ºF. Bake for 45 to 60 more minutes until the crust is browned and you can see the apple mixture bubbling through the slits. If the crust is browned before the filling is cooked, cover the pie loosely with foil.

My mother would freeze the apples in pie dishes during Gravenstein season. She would do this without a crust, lining the dish with freezer wrap and removing the apples from the dish once they were frozen. When she wanted to make a pie later she could just pull the frozen apples out and put them in a crust, adding the sugar mixture at that time. When she baked the frozen pie she would set the oven at 400ºF and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until the crust was browned and the filling bubbling.