If you can’t decide between apple pie or apple crisp, have both! This Apple Cider Caramel Slab Pie with Oat and Almond Crisp topping is the best of both worlds.
The apples, I used a mix of Honeycrisp and Granny Smith, get a coating of apple cider caramel before baking. The filling recipe for this dessert was created by the pie queen Erin Jeanne McDowell. She literally wrote The Book on Pie. She had the brilliant idea to reduce apple cider to a caramel-like consistency. It creates the most intense apple flavoured pie you will ever eat. It takes about 20 minutes to cook down the cider to a thin caramel.
Check out this video on how it all comes together.
I adapted Erin’s recipe and baked it in a quarter sheet pan to make a slab pie. I decided to forgo the top pie crust and finish mine with an Oat and Almond Crisp Topping.
This is my go-to crisp topping. I always have a bag of it in the freezer ready to top whatever fruit is in season. Crumbly and buttery, packed with chopped toasted almonds, oats, brown sugar and flour, it never fails to satisfy.
A scoop of salted caramel or butterscotch ice cream would be very welcome.
It has been almost 9 months since the Pandemic threw us into lockdown on March 14. I suppose I could have gestated a baby in that time. Instead, I put my energy into learning how to co-exist with my husband while he switched gears from working in an office to working at home. It was a bit of transition.
He is an intelligent man and learned, after 4 days, to stop asking “What’s for lunch?” We eventually settled into a routine and he spends most of the day, locked up in his office working. I spend my days in the kitchen, cooking, shooting and writing. He emerges every now and again to make coffee or open a can of sardines and baked beans for lunch. One of the nicest things about having him home with me is that when he does appear for a break, if the counter is strewn with dirty bowls and dishes, as it often is on shoot days, he happily washes them all.
A few weeks ago I was putting the finishing touches on my blood orange meringue pie. I was walking across the kitchen to put the pie on my setup by the window to start taking photos. My husband was at the sink. Unfortunately, he had the dishwasher door open as he was loading the dirty dishes. I did not see the open door. I tripped on it, and the pie and I went flying. It was very sad. I quietly left the kitchen to tend to my wounds and left him to clean up the pie. He asked if the 5 second rule applied. I did not answer him.
Luckily, the only thing broken was the pie. I had a nasty bruise on my thigh and a sore knee for a few days, but was otherwise unharmed. I quickly got to work on pie #2.
The pie crust needs to be baked without the filling. Dock it well (poke holes with a fork) and line the pie shell with parchment paper and some dried beans to act as weights so the dough does not puff up.
Once the pie is baked, start in on the filling. I love working with blood oranges because slicing into one is always a surprise. You never know what shade of orange/red will be revealed. This year, I seemed to have happened on a particularly bloody batch. Every single one was deep red on the inside.
While the pie crust is cooling, get to work on the filling. Lots of eggs, butter, blood orange juice, zest and some cornstarch for thickening. Strain the hot filling into the cooled crust. Chill for at least 6-8 hours.
For the meringue topping, I recommended a Swiss meringue as opposed to an simple French meringue. It is more stable. For a Swiss meringue, you heat the egg whites and sugar over a bowl of simmering water until they reach a temperature of 150°F. Then you whip the whites and sugar until stiff peaks form. In a French meringue, the egg whites and sugar are not heated first.
I decided to pipe the meringue onto the pie because I wanted to have some of the pretty blood orange showing.
