What's For Dessert: Apple Pie Covered with Leaves

Yesterday afternoon I faced up to my fear of making pie crust. I think making pie crust ranks up there with my fear of baking bread (although I suppose my fear of baking bread is not so much a fear as it is just plain impatience due to all the rising that's required). With pastry dough it's the fear of not getting the moisture content just right or not managing to roll out the dough into something that actually resembles a circle. How does Martha always make it look so easy? 

Luckily, my dough turned out fine, and I think I only cursed at it twice. (Which is quite restrained for me, really.) One of the best things about this embellished crust is that it is quite forgiving if the edges of the bottom crust aren't perfect around the pie pan's rim. 

I followed this Fine Cooking recipe to make my pie. Below I've listed a few notes on the recipe, including a couple of tweaks and comments on constructing and baking the pie. 

Recipe notes:

* I don't know what it is about making pie dough, but the amount of water called for never seems to be enough. I probably used about 8-10 tablespoons of water in total to get the dough to come together. After just five tablespoons of water, my dough was still a floury, crumbly mess. 

* The recipe states that you will need 45-55 cut-out leaves to cover the top of the pie. This is true if you cut out small leaves or use small leaf cookie cutters. I used larger cookie cutters, which were each about two inches in width, and their larger size meant that I only needed about 20 leaves to cover the top of the pie. 

* If you want your pie to look super-fancy, take care with cutting in the veins on the leaves. Some of my leaves look pretty good, others look a little blobby.

* I used my handy-dandy apple peeler/corer/slicer tool to prep the apples. When I make this pie again (I think there's a good chance that this pie will make an appearance on Thanksgiving), I think I'll cut the peeled and cored apples by hand to make thicker slices.

* I used four large crispin apples to make my pie; the original recipe calls for 5-6 apples. You're aiming for about seven cups of sliced apples for your pie, so depending on the size of your apples, you may use more or less than the recipe calls for. 

* I added 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger and a scant 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves to the spice mixture.

* D insisted that I bake my pie in a cast iron skillet. No changes to the recipe were necessary. Of course, I'm still lusting after all those pretty pie dishes.

* My total baking time was about 75 minutes. Starting at 60 minutes, I started checking the pie every five minutes to prevent overcooking.

I served the pie alongside a generous scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Superfresh was out of my favorite (and economical!) Turkey Hill Philadelphia-style vanilla ice cream, so this time around we tried Blue Bunny All-Natural Vanilla ice cream -- it was a pretty tasty alternative.