When the pie hits your eye like a big full pie pie that's a PIE YAY
November 20, 2022 12:30 PM   Subscribe

I am making apple pies with hot water crust, but I can't quite figure out the filling. Pie bakers of Mefi, any tips? Gluten-free, but probably non-GF can weigh in, too? Specifics within.

So after reading an article by Ruby Tandoh ("A good-natured pastry for bad-tempered cooks" SLNYer), and finding this gluten-free hot water crust pastry recipe (GF Proper Pork Pies from Kavey Eats and Becky Excell), I am in love with pie again. But I can't quite get the filling or maybe the timing right! Today's batch of mini apple pies bubbled out great gouts of appley goodness during the bake, enough so that the interior of the little pastry case was half full. It still tasted great, though -- it was moist (how, I dunno) and the apples were well-cooked. How do I get this lil pie to stay all the way filled up while baking?

Confession: while I used same time/temp recommended in the linked Tandoh article, I made up my own filling. I did not cook it, either. I mixed the apples with my preferred spices and sugar, and put them in the cases raw. I baked the pies in a muffin tin.

Should I cook the filling? Would that keep it from bubbling out? Or is the temp too high, or do I need a bigger steam hole/cut? Or something else? Help me, sweet fruit pie-ers!



PS: I am married to the crust recipe linked. It's really nice with lard or with butter. I could roll it out on the counter with a bit of flour! No parchment/etc! WHAT! But if you have a GF pie crust recipe that is equally joyous to work, I wouldn't say no.
posted by pepper bird to Food & Drink (9 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I cook my filling in a huge pot before baking so I don’t end up with a big gap under my top crust. I use a mix of Granny Smith and something sweeter/softer like Jonagold for flavor. The Granny Smith holds up well during baking so you still get some bite in the filling. I think I got the idea from America’s Test Kitchen? I can’t remember exactly.
posted by Kicky at 12:37 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Rose’s apple pie always works for me..
“The secret to this pie’s pure apple flavor, with just a slight touch of caramel, is boiling down and concentrating the apples’ juices. ”
posted by Ideefixe at 12:58 PM on November 20, 2022


Best answer: I also pre-cook my filling and use a mix of apples, usually jonagold and winesap.

Melt about 3 tablespoons butter in wide skillet, add 3 pounds apples (peeled, cored, sliced). Toss to coat apples with butter, then cover and cook 5-7 minutes until apples are softened but still slightly crunchy. Stir in 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon salt. Increase heat to high and cook apples at rapid boil about 3 minutes until juices are thick and syrupy. Spread apples on baking sheet to cool to room temperature. Then apply apples to pie crust, apply top crust to apples etc etc.
posted by Princess Leopoldine Grassalkovich nee Esterhazy at 1:02 PM on November 20, 2022


I like a well-baked pie crust, so I do not cook the apples, and they're still quite soft. Usually I mix the apples with sugar and lemon and let them sit. I cook the resulting juices down and add back the syrup. I like to put the pie on a low rack so the bottom crust gets done.

If the top crust has lots of openings, the apples will cook less.
posted by theora55 at 2:05 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


I once worked in a deli whose apple strudel was made with grated apples. They can be piled full of grated apples like hay stacks.
posted by Oyéah at 3:30 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


If your filling is boiling over it may be too moist. You can try pre-cooking to reduce the amount of moisture as suggested above. It's not a bad idea to pre-cook apples or other filling because if you start with fruit the moisture content can be extremely variable. Ideally you want an apple that is not extremely juicy. Some apples were originally bred to make cider and are very juicy, but all apples are normally quite juicy when they are freshly picked. If you make the pie with much older apples - ones that are starting to shrivel, you might have better luck.

The traditional apple pie from the 1800's was also frequently made with dried apples - they would peel them, cut them into rings, string them and hang them up to dry; pie was a good way to reconstitute the apples by slow cooking them with added moisture and sugar.

Another thing you can to do prevent boil overs and the filling all leaking out is to reduce the temperature of the oven. This could make significant changes in how the pastry turns out, depending on your recipe. Usually you start the pie at a high heat and then turn it down to a low heat. This can also help prevent a burnt crust.

Some pie filling recipes include cornstarch to absorb all that moisture and help keep it from boiling out. If you make a mixture of cornstarch, sugar and any spices and then dredge the cut up apple in it the cornstarch will help trap the moisture in the apple pieces, by forming a gooey thick sugar and apple juice layer around each piece of fruit.

I can't give you a recipe. I don't know what apples you have, how old they are or what you are adding to the filling. I think you'll find using more thickener, changing the type of apple to one that isn't described as juicy or precooking the apples will help.

If you like meat pies, you can do the same thing with little chunks of raw meat - dredge them in a cornstarch or flour and spice mixture. Tapioca starch and arrowroot starch have frequently been used as a thickener for fruit pie filling by people who are not even avoiding gluten. Almond flour would probably not work as well, but rice flour probably would.

And this too reflects the original historic recipes - pies were baked in a brick oven that had a fire built inside. When the bricks were extremely hot the fire was allowed to go out and the ash raked out and the pies put in and the oven stopped up again. The pies cooked from the heat in the bricks and was done when the bricks were no longer fiercely hot.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:00 PM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


For a normal sized pie, gushy filling and half empty pie shells generally mean you're using the wrong kind of apples. You want firm apples with a low moisture content (aka baking apples), like Granny Smiths. I will sometimes throw in a couple Honeycrisps as well, but only the smaller, denser ones, never the gigantic ones - those tend have too much water in them.

For mini pies though, I'd cook the filling beforehand, because they will burn before a raw filling can cook down. And with a mini pie, any shrinkage will be way more noticeable. Even the densest apples do shrink a bit.

Don't make too big of an opening, a small steam vent is plenty. If you can find a pie bird, those are ideal to vent steam without allowing any filling to escape.
posted by ananci at 6:29 PM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


Smitten Kitchen has two apple pies - a sliced pie (recipe)* and a Dutch version (recipe)* that uses some tricks to deal with moisture: raisins, “custard powder” and breadcrumbs. I've used her old pie recipe (the old blog format doesn't offer direct links- the horror) and was very happy with that version taken from America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook.

*No deep linking directly to recipe so you have to first click on the full text and then skip to the recipe.
posted by zenon at 7:12 AM on November 21, 2022


Response by poster: Thank you for so many great thoughtful answers. I will be cooking! My apples are Haralred and have baked up very nice (raw and frozen) in the past, so I’m guessing size of pie is probably my main issue.
posted by pepper bird at 3:16 PM on November 21, 2022


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