writ­ten 4/22/2024, updat­ed 4/22/2024

What

Bour­bon Apple Pie with veg­an but­ter and nei­ther milk nor eggs

Main Ingredients

Optional Ingredients and Supplies

Time and Servings

DOUGH: 20 min­utes (dough prep) + 2 hours (refrig­er­a­tion) + 20 min­utes (rolling and shap­ing) = 2 hours, 40 min­utes Total

FILLING: 10 min­utes (Apple peel and core) + 20 min­utes (fill­ing cook) + 1.5 hours cooldown = 2 hours Total

BAKE: 5 minute (prep for oven) + 1 hour (bake) = 1.05 hours Total

Directions

Prepare

Dough

• Whisk Flour (2 cups), Sug­ar (2 Tbsp), Salt (option­al ½ tsp), and Bak­ing Pow­der (¼ tsp)
• Add half of But­ter (4 Tbsp) and all of Short­en­ing (2 Tbsp)
• Rub until Short­en­ing not detectable
• Add rest of But­ter (4 Tbsp) and work until pea-sized But­ter pieces remain
• Mix in Ice Water (4 Tbsp) with fork or hands (option­al­ly can do all of this with a few puls­es of a food proces­sor)
• Grad­u­al­ly add more of Ice Water (1 Tbsp at a time) only until dough sticks when squeezed (should look shag­gy, not super smooth)
• Turn onto plas­tic wrap
• Shape into a disk
• Refrig­er­ate until firm (~2 hours)
• OPTIONAL: For a more flaky crust READ THIS. Fold the dough in halves, thirds, or quar­ters, push down, then do it again. Refrig­er­ate and let rest for about 30 min­utes, then do it again. Don’t over­do it to the point where the dough is gum­my and forms gluten, but it will make the crust flaki­er.

Filling

• Core and Slice Apples (option­al­ly peel, too) into ~¼ inch slices
• Place into mix­ing bowl
• Add Lemon Juice (2 Tbsp) and Bour­bon (¼ Cup), toss­ing it all togeth­er
• Melt Veg­an But­ter (2 Tbsp) in a saucepan or skil­let
• Com­bine Apple Slices, Brown Sug­ar (⅓ Cup), Gran­u­lat­ed Sug­ar (⅓ Cup), and Salt (pinch)
• Cook medi­um-high heat, stir­ring, until Apples soft­en (~5 min­utes)
• Add Sea­son­ings and adjust taste to your lik­ing
• Con­tin­ue cook­ing and stir­ring, until thick­ened (~10 min)
• Option­al­ly, now mix in cornstarch/flour if you want it thick­ened stir­ring well to com­bine (be care­ful not to cre­ate clumps) and let sim­mer some more (~5 min­utes)
• Taste and adjust again
• Remove from heat and let cool to room tem­per­a­ture

Baking

Oven will need to be pre­heat­ed to 400F if you choose to bake right away and not refrig­er­ate the assem­bled pie

Crust

• Divide dough in 2
• Form each into a ball
• Using a roller, roll first ball (bot­tom crust) to over­fill the size of your bak­ing dish and to desired thick­ness (I per­son­al­ly don’t like thick crusts)
• Dust with flour as need­ed
• Place into bak­ing dish and push it to fill the form of the dish
• Option­al: Pre-bake the crust after dim­pling the crust with a fork or using bak­er’s weights on parch­ment paper for about 10–20 min­utes (long-bak­ing desserts like fruit filled pies gen­er­al­ly don’t need to have pre­baked crusts as they’ll bake while the fill­ing sim­mers in the oven)
• Form the 2nd dough ball which will be the upper crust
• Option­al­ly: cut into lat­tice strips if desired
• Spoon fill­ing in
• Dot Veg­an But­ter (2 Tbsp) on top of the fill­ing
• Lay the top crust over the filled pie
• Press the dough togeth­er to cre­ate the crust and cut out some steam holes (have fun here with dec­o­ra­tions)
• If using lat­tice, go ahead and lay the desired pat­tern
• Option­al­ly, refrig­er­ate the assem­bled pie for about an hour or two

Bake

• If you haven’t done it, pre­heat the oven to 400F
• Brush on wash
• Make sure you did­n’t for­get to cut out vent­ing holes
• Bake for about 1 hour
• Option­al: Bake for 25 min­utes, then cov­er the crust with foil so that it does­n’t burn
• Remove
• Let ful­ly cool (~2 hours)
• Option­al: Serve with Ice Cream

ENJOY!!

Pictures

Notes

If you have trou­ble with remov­ing the core from an apple cor­er, all you have to do is use your thumb. I’ve tried dig­ging at it with knives and chop­sticks, and the thumb real­ly works the best. You can remove the upper piece of the core if it’s being stub­born, and the rest will fly out like a bul­let. Apple cores and peels are GREAT for the com­post!

• I messed up on the bot­tom crust by not mak­ing it big enough. The top crust does NOT have to be as large as the bot­tom crust as I found, just needs to meet the bot­tom to seal in. Sub­se­quent­ly, my pie fill­ing bub­bled out
• I don’t like a lot of crust in gen­er­al, so this does­n’t both­er me. Should have done a lat­tice top, but was too lazy to take the extra steps
• As I men­tioned in the instruc­tions, appar­ent­ly, long-bak­ing pies like fruit filled pies real­ly don’t need to have a pre-baked bot­tom crust. I just don’t like mushy pie bot­toms. If you do, that’s cool
• Toast­er Ovens (I always use one) like mine tend to want to cook faster than a large tra­di­tion­al oven, so make sure you don’t let yours burn like I did. I’d already set it at 45 min­utes rather than 1 hour, but it still came out burnt