The Inspiration 🥧

This is a slight merge between my Grammy’s Apple Pie recipe and the amazing 🇳🇱 Dutch Appeltart you’ll find all over the Netherlands. I’ve had it from Villa Zeezicht in two visits 25 years apart - and their’s is amazing!

This author’s blog was captured by the WayBack Machine (where I work ;-)

https://web.archive.org/web/20180225053159/http://www.sweetamandine.com/2010/09/it-sneaks-up.html

and will be the main focus of this merged recipe.

For the dough

• 4 cups flour
• 1 ¼ cups sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 sticks + 2 Tbsps. cold butter, cut into small cubes
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg white, lightly beaten, for the glaze

For the filling

• 3-4 pounds apples (8-10 medium apples); 1/2 Honeycrisp (sweet!); 1/2 Granny Smith (tart!)
• 1 Tbsp. cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp. nutmeg
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• entire small lemon

Dough - In the bowl of a large (14-cup) food processor:

• combine the flour, sugar, and salt
• pulse to blend
• ddd the cubed butter, and process for about ten seconds, until the dough looks like a coarse meal
• add the two eggs, and pulse to incorporate
• split the dough into two lumps, each onto a sheet of plastic wrap, wrap tightly, and refrigerate for 1-2 hours

Filling

While the dough is chilling (or, during the last half an hour of that time, anyway):

• butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan or pie form
• peel, core, and quarter the apples
• stir together the cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar in a small bowl
• combine mix with apples
• squeeze entire lemon over filling
• toss/mix
• preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Bake!

• Press about 3/4 of the chilled dough into the bottom and up the sides of the prepared pan.
• The thickness of the dough along the sides should be about a quarter of an inch or, as the chef explained, the thickness of half of your index finger, sliced vertically, from knuckle to nail.
• Roll out the remaining dough for top crust (very thin is fine).
  • Use flour on roll and/or waxed paper as needed to keep together and peel off
• Add apple filling
• Add crust and pinch edges together
• Use knife and slice a heart or leaf in the center to vent
• Glaze with egg white
• Bake at 350 for 90 minutes to 2 hours (observe darkness of crust), rotating half-way through

The Verdict

I wound up having some extra, so made a “cobbler” side dish. I added some aluminum foil to cover it, with vents, for the first hour. I also didn’t glaze the pie top (it was getting late) and it wound up fine.

It was Amazing - best pie I’ve ever made! 😍

So similar to the Dutch Appeltart craving I’ve had since my twenties and my first trip to Amsterdam. My twin and I were visiting my older brother who was spending a year in Amsterdam for his work. We spent one of my favorite weeks in Europe ever, a lazy deliciously warm and sunny summer week, having cafes, beers, and pie outside his canal-overlooking 3-story apartment, meeting his friends, enjoying the scene and people, and walking around the city. We topped that off with an amazing week visiting 🇫🇷 Paris and Versailles and Chateaux 🏰 all over the Loire Valley.