Chai Spiced Apple Pie
 
Ingredients
Crust:
  • 2½ cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 Tablespoon granulated sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 16 Tablespoons salted butter, cold and cubed
  • 6 Tablespoons cold water
Filling
  • 4 granny smith apples (about 2 lbs)
  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon ground ginger
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ¼ teaspoon ground allspice
  • dash ground black pepper
  • Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with 1 Tablespoon milk
  • Coarse Sugar (optional)
Instructions
Crust:
  1. Mix flour, sugar, and salt together with a spatula.
  2. Using a pastry cutter or 2 knives, cut the cold butter into the flour until it resembles coarse meal. The butter chunks should be as small or smaller than green peas.
  3. Mix in the cold water and stir with a fork until the mixture is raggedy.
  4. Transfer dough to a floured work surface and gently work the dough together with your hands. Split the dough into two equal pieces. Put one piece in the fridge while you work with the other.
  5. Flatten the dough into a disc and roll the dough out with a floured rolling pin into a 12-inch circle. As you are rolling the dough, turn the dough circle a couple times to make sure it is not sticking to the counter and add more flour to your work surface as needed.
  6. Transfer the 12-inch dough circle to a 9-inch pie dish. To transfer the dough without tearing it, loosely wrap the pie dough around your rolling pin and then unroll it over your pie dish.
  7. Trim the edges so there is only about ½ inch of overhang.
  8. Refrigerate while you prepare the filling.
Filling:
  1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
  2. Peel the skin off of the apples. Cut the apple into quarters and then slice the quarters into 5 or 6 slices.
  3. Mix the granulated sugar, flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and pepper together in a small bowl.
  4. Arrange one layer of the apple slices in the pie crust and then sprinkle some of the spice/sugar mixture over the layer of apples. Then add a second layer of apples and another layer of spice/sugar mixture. Continue until you are out of apples and spice/sugar mixture. Spread any excess spice/sugar mixture over the top of the apples.
Top Crust:
  1. Roll out the refrigerated second piece of pie crust into a 12 inch circle.
  2. Cut the circle into ½ -1 inch wide strips.
  3. Picking up every other strip of pie crust arrange the strips vertically.
  4. For the first horizontal strip, pick up every other vertical strip and set them to the side. Lay down the first horizontal strip. Replace the vertical strips.
  5. For the following horizontal strips, fold every other vertical strip (alternating from the ones you picked up last time) over the last horizontal strip. Place the next horizontal strip down and then replace the folded vertical strips back over.
  6. Once you are done with the basket weave, trim the strips of dough so they are even with the bottom pie crust.
  7. Crimp the edges by first folding over the overhang of the bottom crust, and then pinching the edges between your thumb and first finger.
  8. Liberally brush the lattice and pie crust edges with egg wash. You don't need all the egg wash but use more than you probably think you should. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.
  9. Place the pie on a baking sheet.
  10. Bake for 20 minutes and then with the pie still in the oven drop the temperature on the oven to 375°F and bake for another 25 minutes. If the lattice top starts browning too quickly, cover the pie with aluminum foil. I did not need to cover my pie with foil, but it depends on your oven.
  11. Cool on a wire rack for about 1½ hours.
  12. Store covered in the refrigerator.
Recipe by Birch Tree Baking at https://www.birchtreebaking.com/chai-spiced-apple-pie/