 so I got a butter tattoo. My motto to life is just add butter. That is particularly true when it comes to apple pie crust. Apple pie is warm cozy, yummy, delicious, it's elementary. I have the quintessential spruce eats apple pie recipe that gets the job done every single time. You want to know what makes apple pie, apple pie? Today I'm going to show you. My name is Lauren. I'm an associate editor at the Spruce Eats and today we are making apple pie three ways. The must-have ingredients for quintessential apple pie are apples of course, flour, butter, sugar, salt, and then those warm spices. So I'm talking cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, allspice, clove, all of that. Today I'm going to make the quintessential old-fashioned American classic apple pie. I'm going to make a caramel apple pie with the crumple topping and then I'm going to make hand pies. The first step to any apple pie is all about the crust. I love an all-butter crust because I feel like it adds rich flaky textures and the different layers so for this old-fashioned it will be a double crust. So I'm going to start with just some flour, salt, and then I'm going to cut in some butter. Alright so this is kind of where I want it. There's some nice bigger pieces as well as smaller. I'm going to only add about half of this water right now. I don't want my dough to be too wet and it will start binding together. You want most of your dough to be flour and butter. The flour is what binds it all and then the butter is what creates those nice flaky layers and so if you don't have enough butter you'll miss out a lot on that. It's a nice shaggy dough. There's still some loose bits but that's okay because I'm going to finish kneading it on the surface and then it'll all come together. This is kind of the fun part because it's working with your hands and it makes you, it makes me feel like I'm like a little kid. Alright so I'm just going to make this into a nice ball and then we're just going to wrap it and we are good. So my dough is chilled. Now I'm going to roll it out to put into my pie plate. So for this old-fashioned it will be a double crust. In addition to the old-fashioned I'm also going to have a caramel apple pie. That one is just a bottom crust. So we're going to roll this out. I'm going to put some flour down so it doesn't stick. I have a nine inch pie plate so I want to get it about 12 inches. This helps with a good amount of overhang so that way I have enough room to crimp it for both the double and the single crust. Quarter inch thickness. It's ready to go into the pie plate. I don't grease the pie plate. Sometimes I can make it actually soggier and so it's just depending on the kind of pie plate that you have you can just put it straight in. If you find that some of your sides are shorter than others or let's say when you're putting in a kind of tour in some parts you're totally fine with taking some of your pie dough from one end and kind of mashing it in there and then chilling it again. It's not going to be the end of the world by any means. Because this is just a bottom crust for the caramel pie I can go ahead and crimp it. What is the definition of a crimp? I've never been asked that before. The crimp is where you take your fingers or another equipment item and you decorate dough. That is my super high-tech elementary definition. So I have both my bottom crusts done for both my old fashion pie and my caramel pie and now I'm going to chill these while I cut the dough for my hand pies. One of the things that the pie dough is doing when it's chilling is it's taking in all that moisture from the butter and from the water and hydrating. Gluten is doing things and so is the fat and then there's protein. If there's any scientists watching that want to really dive into the nitty gritty of the proteins and the molecules let us know in the comments. So I'm going to make a total of eight hand pies and so I'm going to cut 16 rectangles. This feels particularly scary on camera because I'm like do I know math? The main thing is that you just want to make sure that both sides of your hand pie are roughly the same size otherwise you might get the filling oozing out from them. Now that these are all cut I'm going to chill these as well and then we'll come back to them whenever my filling is ready. So now we are at the heart of the apple pie which is the apples, the star of the show. What are good baking apples? These are apples that hold up their structure whenever they are baked or they're cooked down a bit. I'm going to start by peeling my apples. So my favorite technique is I kind of I take a wide peeler which yes there is such thing as the right peeler and it is a wide peeler. So I just go around the top in this circular motion and then same with the bottom so you have the bottom and the top peeled and then I just do some nice strips and it's totally okay if you have some bits that have some of the peel still on it. You can totally eat and consume the peel it's totally fine but in terms of when you're biting into baked apple pie it can really affect the texture and make it more toothsome in the end. So I really like peeling them I think it's just more enjoyable in the end. So we have three different apples I'm going to show you three different ways you can cut them. For my old-fashioned apple pie I'm going to take a granny smith so now we are quartering them and the way that I like to take out the core is I like to cold right here and then kind of go at a diagonal and it kind of cuts out that core area. All right so we have our slices that's for the old-fashioned I'm just going to set those aside. So for the salted caramel generally I like to dice these I feel like dicing the apples makes it not only easier to cut the slices of apple at the end but I also find it easier to eat. I feel like it's also easier in terms of getting that even coating with your filling of your spices and your butter and all that rich gooeyness and then for the hand pie you actually want it to be pretty fine because of the size of the hand pies you want to maximize the amount of filling that you're putting inside. So all my apples are sliced and now it's time to move on to the filling. The first thing I want to do in terms of making these fillings for the caramel pie as well as the hand pie I want to start this caramel sauce as soon as possible so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put some sugar in a pot. I like to start it with some water. You could do a dry caramel but I like to wet it a little bit. I feel like adding some water helps it from crystallizing so much. So my caramel is going and while that is cooking I'm going to make my old-fashioned pie filling. This is so so easy so I'm going to do both granulated sugar and brown sugar. Obviously cinnamon, clove, ground ginger is another favorite of mine and some allspice flour. So I like to just finish it with a little bit of that ground nutmeg. All right so all you're looking for here is you just want to get them nice and evenly coated. It looks delicious. I'm going to put it into my pie crust now. So the last part of this old-fashioned apple pie filling is I'm going to just dot it with some butter, about two tablespoons of butter on top. This will melt while it's baking and really help to create that saucy ooey gooey apple pie-ness that it is. So I'm just going to set this to the side. We'll finish it later with that top crust. So now I'm going to start on the rest of my fillings. Both of them are par-cooked apples for the caramel pie as well as the hand pies. So the first thing I'm going to add is some brown sugar. I'm going to put in some salt. I have ground ginger, lots and lots of cinnamon and then some allspice and then I also have some vanilla. You can kind of see the caramel's getting super close. It's a light light light brown and once it gets to this stage you kind of want to keep an eye on it because it's really easy for caramel to go from zero to 60 super quick. It takes forever to get there, but then once it's there it goes. As soon as it hits that amber color that I'm looking for, I'm going to turn off the heat, put in my butter, kind of melt that down a little bit more, put in my heavy cream and then season it with vanilla extract and the salt. I think this part is kind of fun. Other people, it kind of terrifies, I don't know. So the big aspect to caramel apple pie is the caramel. We have the caramel now. So I'm just going to put it in. I'm going to eyeball it. I want to save some to top my hand pies and my caramel apple pie in the end and then again this last aspect is flour. I want to put the flour in to really thicken it up into that nice sauce. I don't really want to put a hot filling into a nice cool buttery crust and so we want to cool it down. My hack for that is I like to then put the filling onto either a sheet tray or into a glass or ceramic baking dish, transfer it, freezer, fridge, whatever you have to really speed up that cooling process. We are now making an apple casserole, plot twist, pivot, apple pie possibilities are endless. So with this old-fashioned apple pie you can just as simply put this on top. I love a lattice topping and so this is my pie and I'm going to do a lattice topping if I want to. Lattice refers to the shape of the crosshatch of the dough on top of the pie. For mine I like to do kind of like a mismatch of thicker strips with smaller strips and so I'm going to cut out my strips now. I'm just going to eyeball these because I don't really want to measure them. So then to do the lattice you're going to take every other one, pull them back, start on one side, put a strip down, put those back. Now I'm going to take these other two same thing just back and forth all the way across. Some of these lattices didn't come all the way across and it just looks a little bit wonky. That's where crimping comes in and it just makes everything look nice and cohesive and like you meant to do that. So one of my favorite crimping techniques is I just take a butter knife and I kind of just do this diagonal little slit. As it bakes it kind of then puffs up a little bit. Crimping is something that's really fun and you can get really creative with it. You can also take some tools like a fork and you could do like a little crosshatch. You'd also just do some designs like that. You could take a spoon. You could do like some little divots. You could use the edge of this as well. So there's a lot of things in terms of like what's in your kitchen that everyone can do and it looks like a professional put it together but it's really just some things that were in your kitchen drawer. What is the craziest household item you've ever used to decorate your pie? Let us know in the comments. I don't know who I am today. Keisha is stepping in helping me with the egg wash for the pie crust. So you have this gorgeous egg. Is this what would you like me to do? Yeah I like the whole the whole egg approach. Yeah. What kind of pie do you usually make? Girl. Or what is your favorite pie? Sweet or savory? A pie that you made. That's my favorite. Because you can bake, girl. I love it. I love it. Say it to the camera. This girl can bake. Okay. How am I doing? It looks great. Okay good. Keisha if you could do the honors. I will. And you know I have copious amounts of cheddar cheese in the back. So if it comes back out with cheese on it don't be upset. Great. Bye. Thank you. You're welcome. So salted caramel apple pie. I'm doing a crumble topping because I like to mix things up. I think it's really tasty especially with the caramel filling. I like the textural difference as well. So the crumble is super easy. It's literally just flour, brown sugar, so that's cinnamon, some salt. We're gonna mix it all together and then I have some butter. You're kind of looking for like a wet sand texture and you'll see it'll be clumpy and that is totally what you're looking for. I'm gonna take some of this cooled down filling. I'm gonna transfer a little bit at a time. Let's see if I can do this nice. And then whatever leftover I have here I'm gonna fill some hand pies with. So we're all in there. You can see when I'm like mashing it together with my hand it's making one large clump and so I can kind of do that, break it apart, make some bigger clumps. Just kind of like sprinkle it all over. So that looks great. So I'm just gonna throw this in the oven with the old-fashioned pie. Last thing to do I'm making hand pies. First thing I want to do is I'm gonna prick some vent holes in the top piece of dough. So I want to do this just so that the apple filling gets an even cooking inside and it's not just steaming out. About a couple tablespoons of filling on each. So you can always put less and then put more if you feel like it can fit it. I'll probably have the opposite where I take it off because I put way too much. So now that I have that down on half of these rectangles I'm going to take that top crust, put it down on top, kind of like press it down a little bit on there and then what we want to do is we want to take a fork and crimp those edges to really seal in and lock in that filling. So they're all shaped. I'm just going to put some egg wash on top and then I love the finish of the turbinado sugar so I'm just going to eyeball sprinkle some on top. The thing with putting sugar as a finisher is it can burn because it's sugar it will cook and caramelize so just like with anything when you're baking, keep an eye on it. There we go. Hand pies going in the oven. I have so many favorite things about apple pie. It reminds me of growing up. My dad and I's favorite dessert is apple pie. I don't it's like the quintessential cold weather dessert but also I'll eat it on a hot summer day so just yeah cozy vibes all around. So all the pies are done. I have my old-fashioned apple pie. I have my salted caramel apple pie as well as my hand pies. Now let's dive in and eat them. All right. All right. She ate bad. The old-fashioned is really all about the apples. That's the star. There aren't too many frills going on here. There's the crust of course so I'm going to try the crust first. It's buttery. It's flaky. It's golden brown delicious. All right going for the apples. The great thing about the old-fashioned pie is because you don't par-bake them you get a little crunch and a bite with the apples themselves. They hold more structure and integrity. It's delicious. It's a classic for a reason. Salted caramel apple pie. I'm jazzed for this one. And we'll see how this turns out. Thank you. She's thick. This pie is great. I feel like it combines all the things that I love about the old-fashioned pie but it brings even more with the caramel notes. I really like the texture of these apples more because I feel like it really all melds together. I would say the biggest difference between these two is the texture of the apples are a bit softer but it's a nice different texture throughout but it all comes together really nicely. Last one, hand pies. Let's bite into these. I feel like there's a great ratio to crust. It feels like I'm honestly eating an apple pie but in my hand kind of less messy. You don't have to worry about slicing here. It's great. So if that's your biggest fear slicing into the apple pie, hand pies are where it's at. It's a great takeaway item for guests to just go home. They don't have to stick around for dessert or it's just kind of like get out of my house. Time to take a nap. I think the really rewarding thing about pastry is that yeah sometimes it does seem like you're doing a whole lot and it seems super complicated but then in the end it's really just butter, flour, sugar, some rolling, some dough. It's super easy but then it's really rewarding when it comes out and it looks beautiful and everyone's like wow that's amazing. You're like yeah. Apple pie. It's elementary. For more videos like this make sure you like and subscribe to The Spruce Eats.