Grandma's Recipe - Apple Shortcake (2024)

FAQs

Should apples be cooked before making pie? ›

Baking the apple slices first. It's the magic key to a crispy base, superior flavour and perfectly-cooked-and-never-mushy filling. It's also how you get a generous amount of pie filling without the dreaded giant empty cavity under the lid.

Apples: Granny Smith, Gala apples, Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious, or any tart apple work great for baking.

Bon Appetit says the best apples for baking are Jonagold, Honeycrisp, Braeburn, Mutsu, Winesap, Pink Lady (Cripps Pink) but they also use Granny Smith often. They've listed several apples that have already been mentioned that are crisp and either sweet or tart.

Crust dust is a 1:1 mixture of flour and granulated sugar. When baking a pie, especially a fruit pie, a couple of teaspoons of crust dust sprinkled into the bottom of the crust will help prevent the crust from becoming saturated with juicy filling as it bakes.

Should you cook the apples before baking apple pie? You don't have to pre-cook the filling before spooning it into the pie crust, but it's a quick step I recommend. Just 5 minutes on the stove begins the softening process, and also helps the flavors start to mingle.

You do not need to pre-bake a pie crust for an apple pie or any baked fruit pie really, but we do freeze the dough to help it stay put. Pre-baking the pie crust is only required when making a custard pie OR when making a fresh fruit pie. you should probably get: Pie weights are super helpful to have for pre-baking.

Using a combination of tart and sweet apple varieties will create the right flavor balance for the best apple pie. The 7 best apples for baking pie: Our favorite apple pie recipe calls for Honeycrisp, Braeburn, or Golden Delicious apples, or a mix of all three.

One of the chief reasons bakers end up with apple soup under the crust is failure to bake their pie long enough. There's almost no such thing as over-baking an apple pie; I've baked apple pies for 2 hours and longer, and they turn out just fine.

About 3/4 of an average sliced or cubed apple equates to a single cup. However, it really depends on the size of your apple and how you'll be cutting it.

What is the crispiest sweetest apple? ›

While there is an extremely wide variety of apples, all with varying flavors, the sweetest-tasting apple is fuji, followed by gala, honeycrisp, and Red Delicious apples. These apples are great for snacking and eating as is. Granny Smith, McIntosh, and Pink Lady fall on the tart end of the spectrum.

According to this equivalent list, 10 cups of sliced apples requires 10 medium apples. To be on the safe side, buy one additional apple. You don't want to run short—after all, it's always better to have too many ingredients than too few!

There are a few apples that don't make the cut. While great for snacking, Gala, Fuji and Red Delicious are the most common apples that won't hold up in the oven and will give you a watery-mushy pie, tart or cake.

For the best pies, crisps, and other baked treats, apples need to be firm enough to hold their own during the cooking process. We call these apples “baking apples” and to namedrop, they include Braeburn, Cortland, Honey Gold, Jonathan, Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith, Haralson, and Newtown Pippin.

Envy™ apples release a fresh, subtly sweet aroma when sliced and are primarily sweet, balanced with a slight tanginess mixed with faint fruity, vegetal, and floral nuances.

Here's the short version: The best way to prevent browning is to soak the cut fruit in a saltwater solution (half a teaspoon of kosher salt per cup of water) for 10 minutes, then drain and store until ready to use.

Pectin is the biological glue that holds together plant cells, giving fruits and vegetables their shape and structure. When apples are cooked, this pectin breaks down, and the apples turn mushy.

But when you're dealing with super-juicy summer fruits, pre-cooking seriously helps. Pre-cooking your filling basically allows you to control the juiciness before it goes into the oven, so there are no major surprises when it's time to bake.