Apple Pie

½ cup unsalted butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

¼ cup water

½ cup white sugar

½ cup packed brown sugar

8(ish) Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and sliced

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour to form a paste. Add water, white sugar and brown sugar, and bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and let simmer.

Place the bottom crust in your pan. Fill with apples, mounded slightly. Cover with a lattice work crust. Gently pour the sugar and butter liquid over the crust. Pour slowly so that it does not run off.

Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes, until apples are soft.

This is the original recipe.  I switched it up a little bit.  I put a teaspoon of cinnamon, and about a ¼ teaspoon each of ground cloves and allspice in the syrup. I replaced one tablespoon of the water with vanilla (just pour it in the measuring cup first).  I brushed the bottom crust with egg white to help keep it from getting soggy.  I also put about 2/3 of the mixture in the apples before I filled the pie and mixed them up in it.  Then I put the lattice on top and evenly poured the remainder of the syrup over the crust.  Things I will probably try next time:  Lemon juice in the syrup, probably a tablespoon.  Replacing half of the water in the syrup with bourbon or cognac.  Ground up blanched almonds in the crust.

You obviously don’t have to do a lattice if you don’t want to.  If you want to go with a regular crust, just mix all of the syrup in with the apples before you put them in the pie.