Crunchy Apple Ginger Pie
Crust
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1 3/4 cups flour
1/3 teaspoon salt (but only if you used unsalted butter)
ice water
Directions:
Prepare crust by cutting butter into flour with a pastry blender until mixture is in small lumps about the size of large peas. Add just enough ice water (1 or 2 tablespoons at a time) to make entire mixture barely stick together in a ball. Roll out dough on a floured pastry board, folding and re-rolling only two or three times. Doing less rolling, and thus introducing less flour into the dough will result in a lighter, more flaky, crust. Lay crust in 10-inch pie pan, trim and finish edges as if for a one crust pie.
Topping
Ingredients:
1 cup sifted flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Directions:
Prepare topping by blending together flour, brown sugar, ground ginger, and butter with a pastry blender until the mixture looks like course crumbs. Stir in nuts. Set aside.
Filling
Ingredients:
4 pounds Gravenstein Apples
(or a nice cooking apple)
1/4 cup sugar
1-tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 cup apple juice
3/4 cup Mill Creek Gewürztraminer
1-teaspoon fresh lemon rind
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.
Prepare your sauce before pealing apples. To do so, combine sugar, cornstarch, ginger, apple juice, gewürztraminer, and lemon rind with a wire whip until well blended. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat. Peal your apples and cut into slices. Re-heat sauce and blend with sliced apples. Pile apples into unbaked piecrust, making a mound. Top with topping, working it from the top of the mound down to edge of piecrust. Try to keep it about equal depth over entire pie. Bake in pre-heated oven for about 50 minutes. Cover with foil until last 15 minutes so pie does not burn before it is cooked through. Juice from the pie will bubble out during the cooking, so a foil lined oven bottom will alleviate latter clean up.
