Mulled-Butter Apple Pie | Baking with Dorie

The classic apple pie, of which the mulled-butter apple pie is a variation, has been an ongoing challenge for me. It’s a challenge to make a top and a bottom crust, as well as the fillings just right. It’s like a juggling act; it’s hard to keep everything in balance and for everything to be perfect in taste and texture. For the changing season, a mulled-butter apple pie in Baking with Dorie seems like a great play on the aromatic scents and autumn flavors.

To take on the apple-pie challenge, I have to make Dorie’s all-butter pie dough. Dorie says: “If you’ve never made a piecrust before, you can make this one and pin a blue ribbon on your apron.” For sure, the dough rolls without fuss and it holds a crimped edge. However, I struggle doing so and don’t think I earn a blue ribbon for the effort. In all likelihood, I may have overworked the dough!

The process of making the apple pie on paper is easy. First, make or use store-bought pie dough to line the bottom of the pie pan. Then make the apple fillings and fill the piecrust. Next, drape the top crust over the apples. Finally, bake the pie at 400°F for about an hour.

The mulled-butter apple pie gets an additional step: make the brown better together with the mulled spices of cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, ginger, peppercorns and a strip of orange zest. Allow the spices to steep in the butter which flavors the apple fillings.

What’s lost in the seemingly simple process is the degree of difficulty in getting each step to work seamlessly, meanwhile producing a wonderful and most-loved pie in America. We all know what a good apple pie should look and taste like.

The problem I’ve encountered are several. The apple fillings are too runny, the apple pieces are too crunchy, the pie bottom gets too mushy, the color of the top crust gets too light or too dark… And for today: the bottom crust gets so hard that I can only cut through it with a knife and with great exertion. In other words, the easy-going apple pie is laden with technical difficulties.

I tackle the issue of the runny fillings by cooking the apple pieces for a few minutes. Then thicken the fillings with both flour and pectin. To play around, I use a lattice pattern for the top crust. As it turns out, I like the texture of the top crust much better, and more airy, than the bottom crust.

Again, back to the drawing board. Well, perhaps I should roll the dough thinner to lighten the texture enough while still holding up the load of apple fillings and the juices on top. The challenge goes on!