Dutch Apple Pie, I surrender to you.

So in this particular instance, I suppose last night my kitchen was my Mama’s kitchen. Or at least it smelled like it. One thing I’ve been basically terrified to try is the wonderful, spicy, crumbly sweet-ness that is Dutch Apple Pie. My mother makes a mean apple pie. Seriously, it’s amazing. For holiday’s she even makes one of my cousin’s a whole pie just for himself, because it’s all he’ll eat (frankly, I don’t blame him). So obviously although I’ve helped make this recipe 1500 times, it’s a bit daunting for me because I’m more then a little afraid I won’t measure up.

Then came the challenge. This last weekend, the Boy and I went to a friends for dinner, and since I had about 10 minutes notice, I just ran to the store and grabbed one of their bakery pies. They didn’t have a ton of choices, so I just grabbed a lemon meringue because it’s fairly generic so usually most every one likes it. Sad day for me,because in this case, that wasn’t so. Our host (or one of two I should say) not only doesn’t like meringue, also not a fan of citrus custard pies. In case you’re keeping track, that makes my store bought pie 0-2.

Now, I basically feel like an a-hole. I know that may not make sense, but I like to feed people. When people don’t eat, it upsets me. So I promised to make him a pie, any pie. Peach? Cherry? Apple? Bam, he wants apple. Alright, what about Dutch Apple? That’s his favorite! Sweet, good I know what to make! And I even have apples from the local orchard!

Tuesday I sat down to make the pie and the little voice in my head started to have a panic attack. I’ve never made a Dutch Apple by myself, let alone using only my memory to (try to) recreate my Mama’s specialty. I may or may not have stopped several times purely to spew a string of obscenities, gather myself back together and continue. Happily for me, Luck was with me and everything came out great. The dough was perfect, the apples were spiced just perfect and the crumble was sweet and buttery.