Chai Pi

Last year in honor of March 14th or Pi Day (remember Pi is 3.1415), I made several pies. In fact, I made so many pies I was too tired to blog about it. I made pecan, apple, lemon pudding and pumpkin pies. We also ate pizza (pie) for dinner. 

It was so fun I decided I HAD to make pie again this year for March 14th. This was also a great time to work on my new baking quest: making a dessert with just a little sugar on top. Fruit pies don't use that much added sugar anyways (except for lime or lemon) and after a year of making pies, I felt confident it was going to go well. I felt so confident that I looked at a few recipes and then made my own.

Except...the crust wasn't as pretty.

Last year my Pi decorated apple pie was super cute (see it close up below). I thought it was so cute, I made it the background on my Facebook page.

For some reason this year, the Pi symbol I tried to put on it moved around on me in the baking process and ceased looking like a Pi and more like the word Chai. 

Chai the Hebrew word for "life" and you pronounce it while bringing up phlegm from the back of your throat. That's why I named it the Chai Pi. 




Anyways, the Chai pie turned out fantastic! The crust was flakey. The filling wasn't too runny. You could tell that it was not as sweet as my regular apple pie, but it was delicious. Most importantly my husband with diabetes loved it!

I guess life does taste good! ;)

Now Bake That!

No really, heres' the recipe:


Betsy's Sugar On Top Apple Pie

Crust:
2/3 cup + 2 tbsp butter, diced and chilled
1/2 cup almond meal
1 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp kosher salt
6-7 tbsp ice cold water

Filling:
6-8 apples, peeled, cored and diced
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp orange juice

(optional) Topping:

1 tsp Turbinado sugar (a.k.a. Sugar in the Raw)

Method:
Dice up the butter and then put it on a covered plate in the freezer. Fill up a cup with ice water and let it chill. Measure the dry ingredients (almond meal, flour and salt) and pulse it in the food processor. Add the butter and pulse again until it's coarse crumbs. Measure your ice water. Then with the processor running, slowly add the ice water until the dough balls up on one of the sides of the processor.  Stop the processor right away. Take out the dough, flatten it into a disk. Handle the dough  as minimally as possible. Place the disk in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven at 400. Peel, dice and core the apples. Toss the apple pieces in the cornstarch and spices. Then toss the apples in the orange juice. Set aside.

Pull your dough disk out of the fridge and split in half.  Roll the dough and place the bottom crust in a pie pan. Fill the pie with the filling. Roll out the top crust and place on the top of the pie. Trim, fold and pinch the edges. Score the top of the pie. Using aluminum foil, make a crust shield and cover up the edges of your crust. Sprinkle top with turbinando sugar.

Place pie in the oven. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350 and bake 40 minutes. Pull off your crust shield and then bake another 5-7 minutes more. Let pie cool for an hour before serving.