foodie friday {apple(pie) of my eye}

One of my all time favorite shows was Pushing Daisies. In addition to the wonderful characters, costumes and cinematography every week viewers were teased by these wonderful pies served up at the Pie Holeby the dreamy Ned the pie baker. I nearly licked the television when Chuck made an Apple-Gruyere pie for her aunts.

With lots of holiday celebrating going on I thought I'd share this fantastic pie with you so you can dazzle your friends and family with it at your next holiday dinner:)

Apple-Gruyere Pie

Makes one 9 inch deep dish pie

3lbs Tart red apples-recipe suggests Romes, Empires,Northern Spy but I told the guy at the farmers market I needed tart red apples for a pie and he sold me a mix

1/2 cup Sugar

1 tbsp Lemon Juice

1/8 tsp of Cinnamon

5 tsp Cornstarch

1 Egg- lightly beaten

Pie crust recipe to follow

preheat oven to 400 degrees; remove dough from fridge

peel, core and slice apples into quarters. Slice each quarter thinly. Mix with sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and cornstarch.

Roll out dough into circles about 12 inches in diameter. They need to big enough for the bottom crust to come up the sides to the top of your pie dish and for the top crust to hang over the top of the pie dish a bit.

Pile apples into pie dish, scraping any juices on top of the apples.

Place second crust on top of apples. Seal the two crusts together, brush lightly with beaten eggs and make three parallel slits on the top to allow steam to escape.

Place pie on cookie sheet in center of the oven and reduce temperature to 375 degrees. Bake 50 minutes or until you can see filling bubbling through the slits in the pie crust. Cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes before serving.

For the pie crust I simply followed the amazing recipe from smittenkitchen and added 2 ounces of finely shredded Gruyere cheese.

*I added the cheese at the same time I sprinkled the pieces of butter over the flour mixture.

I am not a skilled baker by any stretch of the imagination. I actually find the precision required in baking to be a little intimidating. This was my first attempt at an apple pie or homemade pie crust. It turned out a thousand times better than I expected. The all butter crust literally melts in your mouth and the Gruyere is the perfect balance to the tart apples.