Apple pies are fantastic. Apple crumbles are easy and absolutely delicious. So today we’re combining the two because, frankly, I will always prefer a crumble over a lattice top. She’s not as done-up, but her personality more than makes up for it.

For The Chew Crew, I am thrilled to introduce my pie dough recipe which I believe will knock any other GF pie dough out of the water. Trust me: I’ve been around the block testing so many pie recipes and they all disappointed me. But this one is a keeper: resilient, elastic, very buttery, and the picture perfect package for your gorgeous apples.

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Overview

Prepare the pie dough (I recommend using my recipe here) and line your pie plate with it, then freeze while you prepare everything else. Mix all the crumble ingredients together and refrigerate. Peel and slice the apples and combine them with the sugar, starch, cinnamon, etc. Add the apples to the pie plate, dot with cold butter, cover with the crumble, and bake. Let cool before serving.

Recipe

Makes one, deep-dish 9-inch (~23 cm) pie

Crumble

150g GF flour blend. A commercial blend is fine but this custom blend is superior:
- 46g superfine white rice flour
- 26g superfine brown rice flour
- 27g cornstarch
- 22g tapioca starch
- 5g potato starch
- 21g powdered milk
- 2g (~1/2 tsp) xanthan gum
113g GF old fashioned oats
80g light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
175g butter, cold

Method:

In a medium bowl, mix all ingredients except the butter until combined. Add butter and rub into the mixture with your hands (I use gloves here) until the butter slightly softens and hydrates the mixture. It will begin to form clumps.
1. This can tire your hands and cause cramping. If your hands often give you trouble, feel free to use a food processor or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Stop as soon as it begins clumping, as you don’t want the mixture to be totally homogenous.
Cover and refrigerate.

Apple Filling

~1.2kg Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples (or your favorite baking apples; I normally use 3 Granny Smith and 2 Honeycrisp in this recipe)
110g light brown sugar
3 tbsp (21g) cornstarch
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Slice the tops and bottoms from the apples and peel. Place each apple on a cutting board and cut off all four sides, leaving only the core, which you can discard.
Slice the apple segments into 1/2-inch thick (1.25 cm) wedges. Don’t worry too much about uniformity here: it’s nice to have pieces that are more cooked and less cooked throughout the pie to create textural variety.
Add all other ingredients to a large bowl with the apple wedges and toss to combine, ensuring each wedge is coated in the mixture and that there are no clumps of cornstarch.

Assembly and Baking

Pie plate lined with laminated and crimped pie dough
2 tbsp butter

Method:

Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F) fan or 220°C (425°F) conventional and arrange a rack in the centre of the oven. Do not continue until oven is totally preheated.
Remove lined pie plate from freezer and pour the apple mixture inside. Gently squash apples so that they fill the plate snugly. Cut 2 tbsp butter into chunks and scatter around the surface of the apples. This butter will melt as the pie bakes and create little nuggets of buttery goodness.
Remove crumble from fridge and scatter all over the apples, squeezing some of the crumble as you apply to create larger chunks. Gently press the crumble to seal in all the apples, creating a dome shape.
Place pie in oven and bake for 20 minutes. Take a look: if the crumble and edges of pie dough are already deeply golden (as mine normally is), cover the entire pie loosely with foil. If it is still pale, continue baking at this temperature until deeply golden.
Lower oven temperature to 160°C (325°F) fan or 175°C (350°F) conventional and bake for 40 minutes (reduce time if you baked for longer at the higher temp). Remove foil and continue to bake until the colour is rich and golden and you can see the apple juices bubbling along the edges about 20 minutes. It’s very important that you see (and/or hear) this bubbling, as this indicates the cornstarch has fully cooked and properly set the pie filling.
Remove the pie from the oven and allow to cool completely before slicing and serving.

Storage: Apple pie will last 2-3 days at room temperature, covered with plastic and/or foil tightly sealed around the rim.

Serving suggestion: Heated up and plated with rich vanilla ice cream, of course. Chantilly is also delicious.

Notes for Nerds:

The reason we bake the pie at two different temps is because we need an initial blast of heat to puff up the pastry and create layers while locking in the butter, and then we need a lower, slower bake to properly cook the apples without burning the crust and crumble. If your oven has both a fan and conventional setting, I prefer baking at 200°C (400°F) fan for 20 minutes, then 175°C (350°F) conventional for about one hour (40 min covered/~20 min uncovered).

This crumble is ideal for other applications as well, including making a simple apple crumble.

In the UK, I would prefer baking this with Granny Smith or Bramley apples and Braeburn in place of the Honeycrisp.

Feel free to spice this differently, such as reducing the cinnamon to 1 tsp and adding 1/2 tsp of allspice and 1/2 tsp ground ginger. A pinch of cardamom is also lovely if you don’t mind leaning into a chai-like flavour palette.

Traditional apple pie recipes do not call for vanilla, and really it’s unnecessary if you plan on serving this with vanilla ice cream. But I often eat this pie on its lonesome, and I think vanilla complements the apples beautifully.

If you’d prefer to make a latticed or covered pie, double the pie dough recipe, and bake more-or-less the same way. Just egg wash the top crust near the end of the bake, sprinkle with demerara, and return to the oven until crisp and gorgeous.

I recommend purchasing a scale that detects tenths of grams, because xanthan gum is both very ‘packable’ (ie the quantity can change significantly if compressed or if scooped while fluffy) and very potent, meaning small differences in quantity can impact your bakes. I use a JSR-150 for weighing gum/salt/baking powder/etc. but any scale accurate to 0.1 g will work.

I hope you adore this apple crumble pie as much as I do and that it becomes a permanent part of your rotation.

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Better Chews

GF Apple Crumble Pie