The Apple Pie Bakery
Homemade Pies - Cakes - Pastries - Desserts

Pastry Tips from the Bakery

“A good pastry is light and airy”
Pastry Dough made from fresh ingredients, flour, butter, shortening, baking powder and eggs is rolled out thinly and used as a base for baked goods. Care must be taken to blend the fat and flour thoroughly before adding any liquid. This ensures that the flour granules are adequately coated and less likely to develop gluten. Over mixing pastry dough results in long gluten strands that toughen the pastry.

“A good pastry is firm enough to support the weight of the filling”
Bottom crust pies generally have a filling that does not require cooking. The type of pastry used depends on the filling. A one-crust pastry shell covers the filling and a two-crust pastry shell completely encloses the filling.

“Blind-baking develops a crust's crispiness”
Many pie recipes involve blind baking the pastry before the filling is added. Blind-baking is used to develop a crust's crispiness, and keep it from becoming soggy under the burden of a very liquid filling. If the crust of the pie requires much more cooking than the chosen filling, it may also be blind-baked before the filling is added and briefly cooked or refrigerated.

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Key Lime Pie
Key lime pie is a dessert made of key limejuice, eggs, sweetened condensed milk and sugar in a piecrust with meringue on top. The dish is named after the small key limes that are naturalized throughout the Florida Keys. Their thin yellow rind makes them more perishable, but they are more tart and aromatic than the common Persian limes.

Sweet Potato Pie
Sweet Potato Pie is a traditional dessert popular in the Southern United States. It is a usually made as a large tart in an open pie shell without a top crust. The filling consists of sweet potatoes, milk, sugar and eggs, flavored with spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg. It bears some resemblance to pumpkin pie in both taste and appearance.

Banoffee Pie
Banoffee pie is a dessert made from biscuits, bananas, butter, and cream and boiled condensed milk. Its name is constructed from the words "banana" and "toffee. The traditional way of preparing the condensed milk is to boil the unopened can for 3-5 hours to produce toffee.

Banana Cream Pie
Banana Cream Pie is a banana variant of cream pie. It was created in 1913. Other common derivatives include the addition of coconut, cinnamon, chocolate, cheese and other fruits.

Banana Cream Pie ingredients:
A baked pie crust (sometimes made from graham flour)
Sugar, flour, salt, milk, eggs, butter, vanilla
Bananas and banana flavored crust.

Boston Cream Pie
The Boston cream pie is actually a cake, not a pie. Created by the French chef, M. Sanzian at Boston's Parker House Hotel, this pudding/cake combination comprises two layers of sponge cake filled with vanilla custard or crème pâtissière. The cake is topped with a chocolate glaze and sometimes confectioner's sugar. The Boston cream pie has been designated the official state dessert of Massachusetts.

Cheesecake
A cheesecake is a sweet, cheese-based cake and is one of the most common "pies" in the world. Cheesecakes can be made of ricotta cheese, havarti, quark, twaróg or cream cheese. Other ingredients such as sugar, eggs, cream and a fruit topping, like strawberries, is frequently added. Typically, the cheese filling or topping covers a crust, which may be pastry, cookie, digestive biscuit or graham cracker-crumb.

Lemon Meringue Pie
Lemon Meringue Pie is a type of baked pie, usually served for dessert, made with a pastry base usually short crust or shortbread pastry, lemon curd filling and a fluffy meringue topping. Lemon meringue pie is typically prepared with a bottom piecrust, but with no upper crust.

Pecan Pie
Pecan pie is a sweet custard pie made primarily of pecans and corn syrup. Most pecan pie recipes include salt and vanilla as flavorings. Other ingredients such as chocolate and bourbon whiskey are popular additions to the recipe. Pecan pie is often served with whipped cream. Texas is the second-biggest pecan producing state where pecan pie is a tradition.

Texas Pecan Pie Recipe
One-cup sugar
One-cup sweet milk
One-half cup pecans, chopped
Three eggs
One tablespoonful flour
When cooked spread the well-beaten
Whites of two eggs on the top, brown
And sprinkle chopped kernels over it.

Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin pie consists of a pumpkin-based custard, ranging in color from orange to brown, baked in a single pie shell, rarely with a top crust. The pie is generally flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger and is traditionally served with whipped cream. It is often made from canned pumpkin or canned pumpkin pie filling available in bakeries and grocery stores.

Rhubarb pie
Rhubarb pie is a made with diced rhubarb and it almost always contains a large amount of sugar to balance the intense tartness of the plant. Strawberry-rhubarb pie is a popular late-spring pie, generally combining the last rhubarb of the season with strawberries.

Sweet Potato Pie
Sweet Potato Pie is a traditional dessert usually made as a large tart in an open pie shell without a top crust. The filling consists of sweet potatoes, milk, sugar and eggs, flavored with spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg. It bears some resemblance to pumpkin pie in both taste and appearance.

APPLES and APPLE PIES

BRAMLEY APPLES
The Bramley apple is very large, two or three times the weight of a typical dessert apple like a Granny Smith and becomes golden and fluffy when cooked. They work well in pies and other dessert dishes. Regardless of the dish, Bramley apples are generally cooked in the same basic way.
- The fruit is peeled and then sliced
- The pieces are covered in lemon juice to prevent them from turning brown
- Sugar is usually added
- In pies and crumbles the fruit is simply covered with the topping and baked
- The moisture in the apples is sufficient to soften them while cooking.

GRANNY SMITH APPLES
Granny Smith apples are a light speckled green in color, though some may have a pink blush. They are crisp, juicy, tart apples that are excellent for cooking, or eating out of the hand. A Granny Smith Apple usually has a slightly more sour, sharp flavor and tends to have a harder texture than other green apples.
- The best cooking apples are crisp and acidic
- The fruit can be fresh, canned, or reconstituted from dried apples
- Cloves may be used for sweetness in much the same way as cinnamon.

American Apple Pie
An apple pie is a fruit pie (or tart) in which the principal filling ingredient is apples. Pastry is generally used top-and-bottom, making a double-crust pie, the upper crust is a pastry lattice woven of strips and a deep-dish apple pie has a top crust only.

Apple Pie and Cheese
One combination of flavors used is that of sharp cheddar cheese. The sharpness of the cheese combines with the tartness of the apple and so produces an appealing taste. While its popularity has waned as modern pies have become sweeter, some people still enjoy this combination.

Dutch Apple Pie
Recipes for Dutch apple pie go back centuries. Dutch recipes typically call for flavorings such as cinnamon and lemon juice, raisons and icing to be added. Though it can be eaten cold, warmed is more common, with a dash of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

The basis of Dutch Apple Pie:
- A crust on the bottom and around the edges
- Filled with pieces or slices of apple, usually a crisp and mildly tart variety
- Cinnamon and sugar are generally mixed in with the apple filling
- Lemon juice is often added
- The filling can be sprinkled with liqueur for taste
- Atop the filling, strands of dough cover the pie in a lattice
- Holding the filling in place but keeping it visible

Mock Apple Pie
A mock apple pie made from crackers was invented in the 1930s by pioneers on the move during the nineteenth century who were bereft of apples and for many years afterwards, a recipe for mock apple pie using crackers, along with sugar and various spices is surprisingly close in taste and texture to real apple pie, although opinion is sharply divided on its merits.

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