Pi Day - Apple Infinity Pie

This pie comes to you as the result of watching too much Fine Living Network. I watched a woman by the name of Twinkle Van Winkle make an "Apple Ribbon Pie" on "The Best Of." Here's the thing though, they talked about the pie and showed it, but didn't actually give a recipe.



So, I thought I would try to come up with one myself. This is where, up to a certain point, things came together beautifully, and then, my brain on sleep-deprivation kicked in.



Well, not exactly horribly, because it still tasted really good, but it didn't look half as pretty as I wanted it to. Yes, taste is more important, but when you see what it took to make this pie (and all the time it to to make it) you'll see why the end result was anti-climatic, even if it did taste good. Thanks brain for forgetting the thickening agent in the mixture so that I sprinkled raw flour on top. Doh! Now what have I done!

So, I'm going to go back to the drawing board and tell you what I should have done. Bottom line, I tried to add a "custard" like filling to the pie, which would have been fine, had I not been once again baking under sleep deprivation. One of these days soon I will have to tell you about all of the fabulous flops and near miss catastrophes that have been occurring in my kitchen. It should make for a good laugh if nothing else.

Here is the process for the Apple Infinity Pie (the way I should have done it with the ingredients - the procedure stays the same). This pie is a labor of love because it took just over an hour to get all the apple slices to look this way - granted this was inbetween taking care of the baby and making dinner too, but it still took forever to do). The process below comes from what was described on "The Best Of" and the crust recipe does come from Ms. Van Winkle's at the Bottletree Bakery. They did publish their "Chess Pie" recipe on Food Network. I made this pie for Pi Day, so this is the entry I'm sending over to the pie celebration of Pi at Kitchen Parade with a homemade crust recipe that was probably the easiest I've done (and really turned out nice). The crust was easy to prepare, only had three ingredients and was easy to just press into the pan and chill til ready. No rolling, no cutting the butter in, etc. And it was still tender and had great flavor.


Crust Recipe:

3 oz cream cheese
8 oz unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

Cream together the cream cheese and butter until well combined and softened. Add the flour and combine to make a dough.



Press into the bottom and sides, place in the refrigerator to chill while preparing the filling.



Apple "Infinity" Pie
(I used a (9-inch tart pan)

4 Granny Smith apples, washed and cut into 4 pieces in a square around the core



2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon flour
3 tablespoons butter, melted

juice of one lemon

Using a vegetable peeler, cut thin slices (peel on) of apple. Place them in a bowl full of cold water with the juice of 1 lemon (to keep from browning).



Using toothpicks, roll each slice of apple into a swirl and secure with toothpick, fitting a line up of approximately 4-6 rolled pieces per toothpick. Place these back in the water to keep while you continue rolling.



Arrange the toothpicked apple slices as tightly as you can in the pastry shell in the tart pan. Once they are all in, remove the toothpicks carefully.



Combine all of the spices with the melted butter and brush liberally over the apples in the tart pan. (The pictures from here show the pecan / custard steps).



Place in a 350 degree oven and bake until the apples are cooked and the edges of the tart shell have pulled away from the side slightly and are browned (approximately 35 minutes - if the apples are browning too much before the crust is done cover the entire pan with tin foil).





(So, are you still be curious as to what I did wrong? I combined all the spices with a bit more butter, 1/4 cup brown sugar, one egg, 1 tablespoon flour and 1 tablespoon heavy cream and sprinkled in some pecans. Those pictures are at the very bottom. In theory all of this should have worked. Why didn't it? I was impatient and actually FORGOT the flour in the mixture. Yippee! It was not thickening at all and took about 1 hour to cook. It really did taste good, but I ended up having to sift flour onto the top of the pie and all of it didn't get absorbed, so it didn't look so good. However, that said, the custardy center was nice). I'm just picky. Anyway, the easiest solution? I just dusted it with powdered sugar before serving and no one was the wiser. Sneaky, huh!?