This Apple Pie recipe features fork-tender apple filling that's flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg, and a buttery pie crust that works perfectly with the pie filling. It's baked until golden brown and topped with elegant pie crust leaves that'll look perfect on any Thanksgiving table!
It has the perfect combination of flavors to give you an apple pie that's truly unforgettable! Plus, it's an incredibly easy recipe that you can even make ahead! The pie crust has only four ingredients (including water!) but will give you the perfect buttery crust!
It's the only Apple Pie recipe you'll ever need and I'm absolutely sure you're going to fall in love with this beautiful and elegant dessert.
Want to learn how to make this Apple Pie? Then keep on reading!
Table of Contents
- What is an Apple Pie?
- What Makes This Apple Pie Recipe Special?
- What Kind of Apples Can I Use to Make an Apple Pie?
- What You Need to Make Apple Pie at Home
- How to Make Apple Pie (Step-by-Step)
- Recipe Variation Ideas for Apple Pie
- How to Store Leftover Apple Pie
- More Apple Recipes You'll Love
- Recipe Card
- Classic Homemade Apple Pie (Easy Recipe for Beginners!)
- Comments
What is an Apple Pie?
An Apple Pie is a classic American dessert, and the dessert pretty much everyone has to make for Thanksgiving! With the perfect pie crust made with butter that's flaky, buttery crisp, and an apple filling that's sweet and tart at the same time and absolutely perfect.
A slice of warm apple pie can lift just about anyone's mood, and the cinnamon-y flavor with the fork-tender apples makes it the most comforting fall dessert ever!
It's the perfect dessert to serve for just about any occasion from a regular weeknight dessert, to a fancy, elegant brunch, to any and all holidays, but especially Thanksgiving!
What Makes This Apple Pie Recipe Special?
Apple pie is the signature dessert of America and a favorite on the Thanksgiving table. Yes, on mine as well. How can you not include this classic treat?
As you can imagine, there must be thousands of recipes out there. This one, in my opinion, is the best and the only recipe you'll need. It's a fairly simple recipe to make but tastes absolutely incredible.
The homemade pie crust has only four ingredients, including one as basic as water. The filling is very simple as well. It consists of brown and regular sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg spices, flour, and salt. That's it! Didn't I say simple? (One important tip though: you might want to make two pies!)
Fitting it into your cooking schedule doesn't need to be difficult, either. Bake the apple pie the day before the gathering, add the final touch of the leaves arrangement and refrigerate. Reheat the pie in the oven shortly before serving and it's ready to go. That saves so much time.
This is the perfect recipe is make ahead and features the perfect buttery crust that you're going to absolutely fall in love with, I'm sure of it!
What Kind of Apples Can I Use to Make an Apple Pie?
To make the best apple pie, you'll need an apple variety that becomes tender when baked but still stays intact and has the perfect balance of flavors.
There are actually thousands of varieties of apples out there, but some commonly found ones that you can use to make apple pie include Braeburn, Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, Jonagold, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Gala, and Golden Delicious.
I've used Granny Smith apples here in this recipe, but you can use any of the varieties mentioned above or even a combination of two or more varieties.
What You Need to Make Apple Pie at Home
This apple pie recipe is incredibly easy to make and even comes with a pie crust recipe! Here's everything you'll need to make this apple pie at home:
For Apple Pie Crust:
Flour: We'll, first of all, need some regular all-purpose flour to make our pie crust and it'll also give it the necessary structure it needs to hold the filling.
Salt: Next, we need some salt which will help to balance out all the flavors, especially since we'll be using unsalted butter.
Butter: As I just mentioned above, we'll be needing some unsalted butter to make our pie crust buttery and absolutely delicious. Make sure to use unsalted butter otherwise it'll be too salty and will take away from the apple pie filling flavor.
Water: We'll also need some cold water to mix everything and get the right consistency.
For Apple Pie Filling:
Apples: We can't make an apple pie without some apples! I've used Granny Smith apples here, but I have a whole section above in this post detailing all the other varieties you can use instead.
White sugar: We'll also need some regular granulated white sugar to sweeten our filling to the right level.
Brown sugar: For an added depth to the sweetness, we'll be using some brown sugar as well as it has a deeper flavor than white sugar.
Flour: We'll also need some flour since it will soak up the juices inside of our apple pie while it's baking in the oven.
Cinnamon: The flavor of cinnamon and apples smells (and tastes) like fall! It's the perfect combination and just elevates the pie so much!
Nutmeg: To enhance the flavor even more, we'll also be using some nutmeg in our apple pie filling.
Butter: You'll also need some butter in the pie filling as well as to grease the pie pan.
How to Make Apple Pie (Step-by-Step)
Making this delicious Thanksgiving dessert at home couldn't get any easier than this! It's an incredibly easy pie crust recipe and the apple pie filling recipe is super simple too.
My apple pie recipe shares everything you need to do to make this from scratch. Let's look at how to make it step by step:
Next, drizzle cold water over the pie crumbs while mixing the crumbs with your hand. Slowly drizzle in the cold water while stirring the mixture around with your hand or a spatula. Form the dough into a ball (do not knead the dough).
Dust a bowl with a tablespoon of flour and roll the dough into a ball. Then split the ball into 2 even pieces, and flatten each piece into disks.
Wrap each dough disk with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for an hour or so.
NOTE: I have also previously refrigerated the dough overnight. You can even freeze the disks and then place them in the fridge and let them thaw overnight before using them the next day.
How to Make Apple Pie Filling
Now let's make our apple pie filling! It'll take about 45 minutes to prepare the apple filling which is perfect while you refrigerate the dough.
In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients, namely the cane brown sugar and regular white sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg spices, and sea salt. Stir with a hand whisker to combine.
Next, let's prep the apples by rinsing, peeling, and slicing the apples.
Place them in a medium glass bowl. Sprinkle the dry filling mixture over apples and toss and mix to coat all the apple slices with the filling mixture.
How to Assemble and Bake Apple Pie
Time to bake our pie! Place the rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 F (204 C).
Grease the pie dish or pie plate. This is optional but preferred to prevent from the crust sticking to the dish.
Take one of the discs of dough out of the fridge. Roll the disk using a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface till it's 12 inches in diameter.
Next, place the rolled pie dough over the pie dish and cut the edge off evenly with a pizza cutter.
Lay the apple slices compactly as possible into the pie dish on top of the bottom crust. I don't just pour the apple slices into the crust, I tuck them in tightly so there are barely any air pockets.
Dust the working surface again with flour and roll out the second disk about ⅛ of an inch thick. Cut out leaves and place them on the edge of the pie.
Now place sliced, thin pieces of butter over the top of the apples. Cover the pie with aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour covered until the juices begin to bubble, then remove the foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes uncovered until the pie is perfectly golden brown.
While the pie is baking you can work on the leave topping. Cut out the leaves and place them on a large 16 X 22 baking sheet lined with parchment paper. You should have enough dough for decoration and there shouldn't be a lot of excess dough left.
Bake the leaves at 400 F (204 C) for 20 min. Remove from the oven and slide the parchment paper with baked leaves onto the countertop. If you leave them on the baking sheet instead, they will continue to bake and will turn out very dark.
Remove the pie from the oven and let it cool to a warm temperature before topping it with baked pie leaves.
Insert the leaves into baked apples and serve. The leaves will be crunchy, but if you prefer the leaves soft then place the leaves while the pie is still hot and let the pie cool with leaves on top.
Slice the pie after it has cooled down. Top it off with some whipped cream or serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Top the pie topped with cream or French vanilla ice cream and enjoy!
Recipe Variation Ideas for Apple Pie
This apple pie recipe is honestly is easiest and tastiest one out there! Since I know you'll be making it many times, here are a few decoration variations:
Lattice crust: Instead of doing the leaves that I've done here in this recipe (which is very reminiscent of fall and Thanksgiving!), you can do a classic lattice crust on top instead. This is when strips of dough are placed on top of the pie in an overlapping crisscrossed way.
Shape cut-outs: An even simple way is to just cover the pie with top crust and cut slits or shapes into it in several places.
How to Store Leftover Apple Pie
If you have any leftovers, you can easily store them by covering them with plastic wrap and popping it in the refrigerator for up to two days.
When you need to reheat the pie after it has been refrigerated, just cover the pie with aluminum foil and reheat it in the preheated oven to 400 (204C) for 10 - 15 minutes.
I don't recommend freezing cooked apple pie as the consistency and texture will change. Instead, you can freeze your apple pie dough for up to 1 month.
More Apple Recipes You'll Love
- No Bake Caramel Apple Pie Cheesecake Parfaits
- Moist Apple Cinnamon Muffins (with Crumb Topping and Glaze)
- The Best Homemade Apple Crisp (Quick and Easy Recipe)
- Simple, Moist Homemade Apple Cake
- Easiest Apple Bars Recipe
- Easiest Apple Bars Recipe
Recipe Card
Classic Homemade Apple Pie (Easy Recipe for Beginners!)
Ingredients
Pie Crust Ingredients
- 2 - cups - organic all-purpose flour + ½ cup for dusting
- 1 tsp. - sea salt
- 10 oz. - cold unsalted butter
- ½ cup - cold water
Apple Pie Filling Ingredients
- 7 3 lbs. large - Granny Smith apples
- ½ cup - organic sugar
- ⅓ cup - cane brown sugar
- ¼ cup - organic all-purpose flour
- ½ tbsp. - ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp. - ground nutmeg
- 3 tbsp. - unsalted butter + 1 tbsp. for greasing the pie dish
Instructions
How to Make Apple Pie
- Making this delicious Thanksgiving dessert at home couldn't get any easier than this! It's an incredibly easy pie crust recipe and the apple pie filling recipe is super simple too.
- My apple pie recipe shares everything you need to do to make this from scratch. Let's look at how to make it step by step:
- Next, drizzle cold water over the pie crumbs while mixing the crumbs with your hand. Slowly drizzle in the cold water while stirring the mixture around with your hand or a spatula. Form the dough into a ball (do not knead the dough).
- Dust a bowl with a tablespoon of flour and roll the dough into a ball. Then split the ball into 2 even pieces, and flatten each piece into disks.
- Wrap each dough disk with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for an hour or so.
- NOTE: I have also previously refrigerated the dough overnight. You can even freeze the disks and then place them in the fridge and let them thaw overnight before using them the next day.
How to Make Apple Pie Filling
- Now let's make our apple pie filling! It'll take about 45 minutes to prepare the apple filling which is perfect while you refrigerate the dough.
- In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients, namely the cane brown sugar and regular white sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg spices, and sea salt. Stir with a hand whisker to combine.
- Next, let's prep the apples by rinsing, peeling, and slicing the apples.
- Place them in a medium glass bowl. Sprinkle the dry filling mixture over apples and toss and mix to coat all the apple slices with the filling mixture.
How to Assemble and Bake Apple Pie
- Time to bake our pie! Place the rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 F (204 C).
- Grease the pie dish or pie plate. This is optional but preferred to prevent from the crust sticking to the dish.
- Take one of the discs of dough out of the fridge. Roll the disk using a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface till it's 12 inches in diameter.
- Next, place the rolled pie dough over the pie dish and cut the edge off evenly with a pizza cutter.
- Lay the apple slices compactly as possible into the pie dish on top of the bottom crust. I don't just pour the apple slices into the crust, I tuck them in tightly so there are barely any air pockets.
- Dust the working surface again with flour and roll out the second disk about ⅛ of an inch thick. Cut out leaves and place them on the edge of the pie.
- Now place sliced, thin pieces of butter over the top of the apples. Cover the pie with aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour covered until the juices begin to bubble, then remove the foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes uncovered until the pie is perfectly golden brown.
- While the pie is baking you can work on the leave topping. Cut out the leaves and place them on a large 16 X 22 baking sheet lined with parchment paper. You should have enough dough for decoration and there shouldn't be a lot of excess dough left.
- Bake the leaves at 400 F (204 C) for 20 min. Remove from the oven and slide the parchment paper with baked leaves onto the countertop. If you leave them on the baking sheet instead, they will continue to bake and will turn out very dark.
- Remove the pie from the oven and let it cool to a warm temperature before topping it with baked pie leaves.
- Insert the leaves into baked apples and serve. The leaves will be crunchy, but if you prefer the leaves soft then place the leaves while the pie is still hot and let the pie cool with leaves on top.
- Slice the pie after it has cooled down. Top it off with some whipped cream or serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
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Vera Warren says
For step 13, at what temperature do you it bake it for 1 hour?
Valya of Valya's Taste of Home says
350 F.
Victoria says
So delicious. I usually don't care for crust, but it was sooo good, same for filling. Will definetely make again. I don't bake much, so this might be a dumb question. Why put the dough in the fridge for an hour? It was so hard, I couldn't roll it out and had to wait a while for it to soften up.
www.valyastasteofhome.com says
No question too simple, no comment too small. ?
It's actually a great question! By chilling the dough before rolling it out, it allows the present gluten strands time to settle down and relax. This actually makes your pastry dough easier to roll out, strasnfer, and cuts down on any shrinking during the baking process. Chilling also lets the dough become moist. I hope this helps. ?
Klozet Kapağı says
Thanks for the recipe, I will try it out soon.
www.valyastasteofhome.com says
You are very welcome, enjoy! 🙂