As easy as apple pie? Homemade apple pie can be made much more quickly using a high quality refrigerated pie dough. The secret ingredient here is butter. - See more at: http://cook123.com

TRANSCRIPT:
Today, we're going to make a quick apple pie. And I'm going to save you some time doing a couple of things. One is we bought prepared pie crust.

These pie crusts you can buy in the store, they're not frozen. These are in the refrigerated section. There are frozen pie shells. I find that they're not very good. They're tasteless. A lot of times they may be freezer burned. And they have a whole different texture.

This is just like a homemade pie crust. It has butter blended into it. It's refrigerated. It has a short shelf life. It's easy to work with. And it's going to save you a whole lot of time.

So we're going to work with this today. We're going to finish cutting our apples for our apple pie. I am using a combination of apples today. I have Fuji, which is what's in my hand right now.

I like these apples. They have a nice sweetness. And they bake really well. You'll find some apples bake better than other ones. And then I'm also using a Granny Smith apple.

Now to make an apple pie, depending on the weight of the apple and how big they are, you're going to use probably seven or eight. And this is going to give you a good size pie.

We're going to put it in a 10" pie pan. We have four Granny Smith apples in here and for Fuji apples. We are going to add to this to make the filling for the pie.

This is one cup of sugar, one quarter cup of flour, about a tablespoon of cinnamon, and I have a little tiny, tiny bit of trace of nutmeg. And we're also going to add a little bit of butter. This is probably, if you added it up, a couple of tablespoons.

Now we have all our ingredients in. And we are going to turn it over and dust everything. Coat everything really good with this combination.

We're ready to assemble our pie. What I've done is this is just regular old flour. We're going to lay the pie shell out now. Most of time, these pie shells are just a scooch too small. The bottom's usually find. The top you need, because you're going to overlap a little bit more-- so you may want to roll it out just a little bit.

So from the middle out-- middle out-- middle out-- never roll all the way across the pie. It toughens the pie shell. Now, I'm cooking this in an aluminum pan. Some people are glass. I actually don't mind the aluminum pan. I prefer it.

I think the crust on the bottom cooks a little better, whereas the glass pie dish, sometimes it's a little soggy. I think if you're doing an open dish pie, where you won't have the top cover, then it would be fine. So we're in there. We're going to add all of these apples.

Now, you want to get them nice, and tight, and packed, because the idea is more apples, there it is. So we're going to really push them down here. I am going to use my hands for this, because I really want this very tight, with no air gaps in it.

This works out to be, approximately, I would say, if you're doing it by weight, two and a half pounds of apples. So they're packed nice and tight. Now, you have all the sugar left from the bowl. We're going to sprinkle that all the way around.

We're going to take the other pie shell. Again, roll out from the middle, out from the middle. We're going to fold this over to lift it up, fold it into quarters. We're going to take this pie and fold it. We're going to fold it over.

Now, the one thing you do you want to do with an apple pie, or any kind of pie that's a double crust, is it needs a hole. It needs a steam vent. All we're going to do is we're going to take a fork. We're going to cut some little holes. And that's going to give us the steam vent that we need. So now this can either go in the freezer or it can go in the oven.

If we're going to put it in the oven, we're going to bake it at 350 degrees for approximately an hour. If the apples are really crisp, then it's going to take the hour. And you can test them just by taking a nice little knife. And you're just going to slide it in. And if the apples are nice and soft, you're ready to go. But if there's any give to them, you don't want to.

So we're ready to go in the oven. So this is our apple pie finished. We're going to slice it. Now, you can serve this with whipped cream. You could serve it with vanilla bean ice cream. I'd prefer vanilla bean ice cream.

Nice little wedge. Make sure you cut all the way through. The hardest part is getting the first piece out intact. I think we have it.

Look at that. It smells wonderful. Cinnamon, nutmeg, apples, and a flaky pastry. Here we are. Apple pie. Delicious.
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