Food Friday: Swedish Apple Pie Again

Three years ago I blogged about a wonderful recipe:  Swedish Apple Pie.  This recipe is a treat to me, in part because two dear friends separately gave me the recipe.  Each time I make it, I think lovingly of them and am so grateful for their friendship even though one of them has crossed the veil.

This time I made it slightly differently.  Because I was concerned about how well glass would travel from Vermont to South Carolina, I left most of our glass kitchen things in Vermont.  For the most part this has not been a problem!  However, when it came to making a pie for company, I was at a loss: no pie dish.  SO...what to do?  I went to the freezer section and purchased a frozen pie crust in one of those cheap-y aluminum pie tins for this pie.  (AFTERTHOUGHT: now is the time to replace the glass pie dish!!)

To make the Swedish Apple Pie you do not normally use a pie crust.  The recipe itself makes the crust somehow.

The method is to peel and slice apples and fill the pie dish 2/3 full of apples.  Some apples are supposedly better than other apples for pies, but I just use what I have.  This time it was McIntosh apples.  Some recipes call for hard apples, or rather, apples that remain pretty hard/firm when they are cooked.  Those are not my favorite. I don't mind if the apples disintegrate into tasty apple-y mush, which is more or less what Macs do.

After the pie dish is full of apples you sprinkle on top 1/4 chopped walnuts then 1 teaspoon cinnamon followed by 1 Tablespoon of sugar which does not seem like much but is perfect. Set aside while you mix the other ingredients.

In a small bowl place 1 cup flour, 1 cup granulated sugar, 3/4 cup melted BUTTER, one egg, and 1 teaspoon vanilla if you like vanilla.  Mix well then spread over the top of the apples/walnuts/cinnamon/sugar.  It is a bit tricky (sometimes) to spread the topping evenly.  It will still taste good if it is not perfectly evenly spread.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 35 minutes or more. I am pretty sure I cooked this one for quite a bit longer.  I just kept checking.  It wants to be nicely browned and not at all jiggly in the center.

Having the crust in the bottom of the pie pan was okay but it did make the top crust around the edges of the pan a little bit thick.  I only had one piece and thought it was fine but each piece Dear One eats, he leaves a semi-circle of that thick-ish crust on his plate or puts it down the sink.  Thus, I gather it is better to just make this pie as it is written, without a crust already in the pan...