Fantastic Apple Pie Recipe

My next door neighbor is a genuinely nice man.  He always says hello and gives me advice on how to tend to our garden and always has a flower cut fresh from his ready for my daughter when she plays outside.  Neighbors like this are hard to find anymore, but I am happy to say that I have one.  Earlier this week, we had a storm here in St. Louis and his beautiful apple tree had a branch broken during the windy and rainy day.  My neighbor, being the good guy that he is, brought us a bag full of Granny Smith Apples from the broken branch.

I do love apples but I was a little perplexed as this seemed like a lot of them and as I am sure that most people who know me would tell you, I am not a fan of wasting much of anything.  So my mind naturally gravitated to what I could make with that many apples.  Then it came to me... APPLE PIE!!!

As I usually do with my ideas, I scoured the Internet to research recipes and techniques and then molded them all together with a few of my ideas thrown in to come up with one of the best apple pie recipes I have ever eaten.  The result was a wife and daughter with enormous smiles on their faces as we enjoyed our dessert last evening.  I hope you enjoy too!

Adam's Apple Crumb Pie

Ingredients:

• 9-inch pastry shell, unbaked, chilled
• 1 cup sifted flour
• 2/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup soft butter
• 1/2 cup walnuts (almost any other nut will do fine here) 
• 6 cups peeled, sliced cooking apples
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Preparation:

Combine flour, brown sugar, salt, walnuts and butter; blend until crumbly then set aside. Mix together the sugar, Cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg.  Combine apples and sugar/spice mixture; mix gently to coat apple slices. Pack apple mixture into chilled crust. Sprinkle crumb topping over apples. Bake in 375° oven until apples are tender, about 50 minutes.