I had quite the bak­ing doozy over the hol­i­days.  I decided to step out of my com­fort zone and make Anne Thornton’s Ched­dar Cheese Apple Pie from scratch.  Not many peo­ple know this but my favorite way to eat apples is with a bit of sharp ched­dar – the fla­vors just work SO well together.  So, I took my spiffy new Emile Henry pie plate out of it’s safe nook in the cup­board, prepped my ingre­di­ents, broke out my lovely mar­ble pas­try board and rolling pin and decided that even I could mas­ter the impos­si­ble – a flaky pie crust.  Well – after fol­low­ing the instruc­tions to a “T”, I real­ized that I need to start bak­ing in train­ing wheels because I messed that crust up to within an inch of its flour dusted life.  I couldn’t under­stand where the hell I went wrong until one of my dear friends Bec – who is a bak­ing god­dess – asked me “Did you put too much flour on the board?  You know flour dries out dough, right?”  I think I used every col­or­ful word in my vocab­u­lary when I real­ized my oops.  Well, I hope the bak­ing pow­ers that be don’t kick my prover­bial stiletto-wearing behind because I did the unthink­able and used the pre­made pie crusts as I didn’t have the lux­ury to start all over again.  I was on a tight dead­line and had to trans­port that pie up to my mother’s house for the hol­i­days.  Well, can I say this pie ROCKED – even with my stu­pid oops – and I have to attempt this again, but I promise to watch the flour dust­ing.  Oh – and to watch my mouth next time I make such a stu­pid mis­take as over dust­ing that pas­try board.  Clearly, I have much to learn about baking.

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Anne Thornton’s Ched­dar Cheese Apple Pie

Recipe cour­tesy of Anne Thorn­ton, Food Network

Ingre­di­ents:

For the Crust:

• 2 1/2 cups of all pur­pose flour
• 1 table­spoon of sugar
• 1/2 tea­spoon fine sea salt
• 2 sticks of cold unsalted but­ter, cut into 1/2″ cubes
• 1 cup of grated sharp ched­dar cheese
• 5 table­spoons of ice water (more if needed)

Note: Or if you screw up with me, two store bought pie crusts with the ched­dar cheese (I used Pillsbury)

For the Fill­ing:

• 1 1/2 table­spoons of cornstarch
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 6 Golden Deli­cious apples, cored, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 table­spoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/’2 tea­spoon grated fresh lemon zest
• pinch of fine sea salt
• 2 table­spoons (1/4 stick) but­ter, chilled and diced
• Table­spoon of turbinado sugar for dusting

Direc­tions:

For the Crust:

1. In the food proces­sor, mix the flour, sugar, sea salt and pulse for 5 seconds.
2. Add the chilled but­ter and pulse until the dough looks like fine meal.
3. Add the ched­dar cheese and pulse for 5 seconds.
4. Trans­fer the flour mix­ture to a large bowl and add the ice water slowly, fluff­ing with a fork until moist clumps form.  If the dough becomes too dry, add ice water, one table­spoon at a time.
5. Form the dough into a ball and divide in half.
6. Flat­ten each half into a disk, wrap with cling wrap and place in fridge for at least an hour.

For the Fill­ing:

1. Pre­heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Mix the corn­starch and the sugar in a large bowl, mak­ing sure that there are no lumps in the cornstarch.
3. Add the apples, lemon juice, lemon zest and salt.

Assem­bly:

1. On a large LIGHTLY floured work­space, roll out one of the disks to a 13-inch round.  (Key term – lightly).
2. Trans­fer the dough to a 9-inch deep pie plate and brush the dough hang­ing over the edge with water.
3. Pour the fill­ing into the dough-lined dish and dot it with the 2 table­spoons of butter.
4. On the same LIGHTLY floured sur­face, roll out the sec­ond disk into a 12-inch round.  (Really can’t stress the lightly enough).
5. Place the dough on top of the fill­ing and press the dough over­hang from the bot­tom and top pieces to seal.
6. Cut the over­hang to 1/2 an inch.
7. Fold the over­hang over and crimp decoratively.
8. Cut a small dec­o­ra­tive “X” in the cen­ter and fold cor­ners back to allow the steam to escape.
9. Lightly brush the top of the pie with ice water and dust lightly with the turbinado sugar.
10. Bake until the pie is golden brown, about 30 minutes.
11. Cover the crust edge with foil and turn the oven tem­per­a­ture to 375 degrees.
12. Bake the pie until the fill­ing bub­bles thickly in the cen­ter, about 30 minutes.
13. Cool pie on rack for an hour.

Gather Your Ingredients

Mmmmm – Apples

Time to make the Dough – sorry no nuts

Shall We Roll?

And My Utter Fail – No Way This is “Lightly” Dusted – oops!

I could smooch that dough­boy right now…

All Glossed Up With Some­where To Go

And, May I Present My First Quasi Home­made Apple Ched­dar Pie

Note:  I heard it was even good for break­fast the next day – not that I attempted that.  *cough cough*