Apple Cranberry Pie

I like apples, and I like cranberries. They seem to get along well in juice, so I figured, why not pie? I consulted the almighty Google, and sure enough, I found a plethora of apple cranberry pie recipes. I less than impressed with most of the recipes, so I sort of combined two recipes. The end result was quite delightful, apples that are perfectly cooked, cranberries on the verge of exploding so they just burst with flavor in your mouth. It's a very good thing.

You will also notice the crumb crust. Depending on what part of the country you are in, an apple pie with a crumb crust may be referred to as "French apple pie" or "Dutch apple pie." My opinion is someone just got lazy one day and opted to throw apple crisp topping on top of the pie instead of taking the time to make a top crust. Regardless, crumb crusts are love in my book.

In terms of the recipe, I based my filling off of this recipe, because it uses real cranberries. For the crumb topping, I altered the crisp off of my apple crisp recipe. I tweaked the cooking time a little bit because I used McIntosh apples instead of gaias and I wanted pie, not apple sauce. Without further ado:

Ingredients:

Crust:
Pastry crust for a 9" pie, you can use grandma's recipe if you want, or you can just pie the ones that come rolled up in a box. That's what I do, I admit it, I have no shame.

Filling:
5 medium McIntosh apples, cored, peeled, and thinly sliced
3/4 of a bag of fresh cranberries
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping:
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats, from the canister
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees

2. Grease a 9" pie plate, line it with the pastry crust.

3. Put all the filling ingredients into a large mixing bowl and toss. I used a large serving fork. Be gentle, you don't want to break the cranberries.

4. Dump the filling into the pie plate.

5. Place the pie plate into the oven to bake for about ten minutes while you make the topping.

6. Combine the topping ingredients in a mixing bowl. I use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. The goal is a consistent mixture with the texture of sand that can hold it's shape if you squeeze it together.

7. Pull the pie out of the oven, drop the temperature down to 375 degrees. Dump the topping on top of the filling, smooth out to look pretty and cover all of the apple goodness.

8. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the apples are tender and the topping is crisp.

Give this pie a good 45 minutes to an hour before you cut into it. Cranberries have a lot of naturally occurring pectin, so as the pie cools it gels together quite nicely. I wish I had taken a picture of the pie right out of the oven before people started stealing slices, but pie really does not last that long in this household. This recipe is definitely a winner, and will likely be showing up again around Christmas time.