Apple Pie

Living in the Las Vegas desert was quite a change for me, coming from Maryland.  I love the heat and the year-round sunshine but every year around fall I get nostalgic and wish for pumpkin patches and Christmas tree farms. (But not for snow or ice.)  I always worried about what I would do with my children to celebrate fall and winter in a climate where there is no snow and it is still 90 degrees in October.

Amazingly, this year I found an orchard here in Vegas.  Las Vegas is something of an onion.  Everyone knows all about the Strip but there really is more to this town than that, you just have to peel back a few layers to find it.  This orchard is about 40 minutes from our house and they operate year round. (since 1920, it's been here all along and I didn't know!) People can come and pick a variety of different row and tree crops depending upon what is in season.

Right now there are apples and pears, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, eggplant and okra among others.  They make and sell apple cider and apple cider donuts too.

We had a great time tromping down rows picking apples and scouring the pumpkin patch for our favorites to bring home.  The kids had a great time and I know we'll be back...and not just in October for pumpkins.

We had a great experience, and we bought a ton of apples.  Way too many apples, it was too hard to resist them! We plan on canning apple butter and apple sauce and yesterday I made an apple pie.  I'm sure there will be other apple desserts as well.

But for now, if you are looking to make a traditional style two-crust apple pie, this is a great recipe.  I decided to use 4 Jonagold and 3 Granny Smith apples to give it some variety in flavor and I thought it was delicious.

I also used a different recipe for the crust, I used this one by Ina Garten instead.  This is literally one of the very first times I made a pie crust that I was actually happy with and I think it was all about method.  Instead of making the dough with your hands you use the food processor to pulse everything together.

After you add the water and the dough starts to form a ball you just turn it out onto a piece of plastic wrap and smoosh it together into a disk, wrap it and refrigerate it for at least half an hour.

My dough was easy to work with it didn't crumble or crack and it tasted so good!  I'll be using this recipe as my go-to for now on. :)

Here's a few pics of the pie...yum!

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