Food: Vintage Apple Pie Recipe

It's more than possible that I blog about apple pies every autumn, but seriously they are one of my favorite things about the season especially when you pick them yourself like we did on our last trip to the orchard. But I also grew up with apple trees in the back garden so half the fun was being a tomboy and climbing them but also getting to help pick them every autumn, wrapping them up for over the winter and all the apple pies and crumbles we could eat.

Modern recipes for apple pies are far too fancy for my liking, they always to make such a song and dance out of a relatively easy recipe. So I always reach for a recipe that's in one of my favorite vintage cookbooks - The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook. It's a very well loved, a little tattered and worn but essential cookbook in my collection. It has both my go to recipe for plain pastry and for apple pies (which I love playing around and adjusting). 

While this recipe is pretty simple, that doesn't mean it can't be jazzed up, I always through in a cup or two of raspberries into each pie and I'm sure brambles or raisins would taste just as good too. But this recipe is to much of my favorite to not share again (with some adjustments from the last time it was posted).

Old good fashioned apple pie

6 medium apples - eating or cooking
2 cups of raspberries
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of all spice
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 tablespoon of butter
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
Milk

Line bottom of your pie tin with pastry and cut off any excess pastry from around the edges. Peel, core and cute apples into small bite sized pieces and mix in the raspberries. Dump them both into your pastry lined pie tin. Separately mix the sugar, cinnamon, all spice salt and lemon juice together and sprinkle over your apple/raspberry mix. Cut up your tablespoon of butter and dot it around the top.

Wet the edges of your pie and roll out/take your pie top and lay over, covering the pie. Press the edges together. Cut a little vent in the top of the pie and glaze with a little bit of milk so the crust goes lovely and golden.

Bake at 450F on the lowest shelf for 10 minutes then reduce to 350F for 45 - 60 minutes on the middle shelf.

Going by how many apples we still have left, this recipe will be getting used for many more pies in the next month or so. It's that good and never lasts long around here.

But the big, all important question is, what do you serve your apple pie with? Custard, cream, ice cream?

LIFE: Orchard, Apples and Pumpkin Fields

With Michigan ranking third in the apple production in the US, one of our great autumnal traditions, and a birthday treat, is taking a trip to the Erwin Orchard and Cider Mill (where we visited last year) in South Lyon. At a time when most people (me included) were just getting up out of bed on Sunday morning, we'd grabbed our 1/2 bushel bag and were taking a tractor ride around the orchards.

Autumn calls for pies, it calls for thick, deep apple pies (clicky for my go to vintage apple pie recipe) with custard, for some more of that caramel apple jam I made last year and nothing beats picking it fresh from the tree. Granted a bit of tree climbing is always involved but that's half the fun. Slotted between the miles of rows of apple trees, pumpkins are getting lovely and rip, big fat orange balls of Halloween goodness. We ended up picking about 60 or so apples in total, a mix between Northern Spry - a tart cooking apple and McIntosh a lovely sweet apple which is an ideal mixed use apple. 

While the raspberry patch is often overlooked compared to all the orchards, the cider and the doughnuts, we always like to top up on our stock, especially with apple pies on the horizon when i'll just throw a load in for good measure. That and jam, there's always a need for more raspberry jam.  

So today (Friday) you shall find me in the kitchen baking apple and raspberry pies and trying out a raspberry loaf cake no doubt many of which will be enjoyed over the weekend.

Do you have any autumn traditions and favorite things to bake?