Brown Bag Apple Pie

“Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.” ~ Jane Austen

Ain’t that the truth?

The thing is, I have a very strong pastry skill set. Cakes, pies, danish, and all sorts of things. When I was still working professionally in the culinary world, I was working under a World Champion pastry chef (from France).  Working under him I learned a lot of great things about food in general, and taking pride in the hard work that we did.

Today, as a full-time working, married mom of three, I still have that same respect for great food, and making pastries from scratch, and fancy, elaborately rolled out and decorated pie crusts. And selfishly,  it’s kind of nice to be the one person in your inner circle that can legitimately bake. But I also want to LIVE MY LIFE. So sometimes, simple and easy is the path to take.  So when I come across a recipe as simple as this one, I often want to discredit it, assuming that if it is that easy that even my husband any kitchen impaired person could make it, that there is no way that it can be good.

So scrolling through my Instagram feed one day, I saw A Life From Scratch bake a pie in a brown bag. WHAT? You mean that stack of Trader Joe’s bags that I have from forgetting to take in my own reusable bags like the delinquent I am can be used in a way like this? Like I don’t need to bust out all of my fancy pastry cutting tools and dirty up my pretty new quartz countertops rolling out pie shells to make a kick ass pie? Sign me up because that sounds nice.

Friends, I assure you that this is hands down my go to pie when I need to make a pie for dessert. It tastes like it takes much more work than this. And I will also leave you with this lesson from  Mr. World Champion pastry chef. Presentation is NOTHING if the flavor isn’t there first. So with that, get your granny smiths, your butter, and come with me on this journey of a homemade apple pie that is foolproof.

You are now a culinary hero.

---

Ingredients:

Bottom crust 

1.5 cups flour (all-purpose, please don’t overcomplicate this)

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 Tbsp. milk

Filling:

6 granny smith apples, peeled and sliced thin

1/2 cup sugar

2 Tbsp. flour

2.5 tsp. cinnamon

Top crust:

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1.5 sticks butter, softened

---

Directions:

1. Mix the ingredients for the bottom crust together and press it into the bottom of your pie dish, as evenly as possible, and up the sides. I prefer a glass pie dish (because I’m fancy) but you can use whatever you’ve got.
2. Peel and slice your granny smith apples. You do not need one of those fancy apple peeler/corer things to do this properly. Those are annoying, they break all of the time, and knife skills are an important skill to possess in the kitchen. I could go into another rant here, but I am on a new level today. And there is always tomorrow.  Moving along…toss those beautifully hand peeled and cut apples with the rest of the filling ingredients into a bowl, and then put them on top of the bottom crust. This may seem like an irrational amount of apples to you, but do you want a glorious pie or not?
3. Mix the ingredients together for the top crust. This will at first look crumbly, then sticky. This means its perfect. Pat this mixture, in pieces, on top of that mountain of apples.
4. Place this glorious creation into a brown paper bag, and fold it over to close it. Put it on a sheet pan, and put it into a 425 degree oven for about an hour. I swear to you this will not burn your house down. Keep a close eye if you are the paranoid type, but I assure you, I’ve made this multiple times without incident. Once you take it out of the oven, let it cool for a bit, and then you can take it out of its little brown paper bag cocoon. And when you do that, you will find the most beautiful crumb topped apple pie that is straight from the lord.org and you may even hear angels sing.  Or DJ Khaled, because all you do is win.