Photo by avlxyz/Flickr CC
Having just given my recommendations on which apples to eat, I thought I might go one step further and give my personal recipes for the best apple desserts. In the family I specialize in desserts--good tasting if not good looking unless one of my daughters is helping with the aesthetics. Unlike most dessert makers--and despite graduate training in chemistry-- I do not put a whole lot of stock in precision, so many of the recommendations include dashes and shakes. Here goes for the first recipe: Apple pie. The key to a good pie is to get both the crust right and the apple insides tart enough to be interesting.
You'll notice the recipe calls for either butter or margarine. I have cooked all my life with margarine because when we were being raised margarine was thought to be more healthy. That was shown to be false--at least the margarines that have a lot of trans fatty acids and such are probably worse for you than butter. Nonetheless this habit has stuck in no small measure because I also keep kosher and you can make a good apple pie for a meat meal with some of the high-end margarines that have no trans fatty acids and a Kosher parve certification. Purists will insist on butter. I have threatened taste-testing contests to see if people can tell which pie is made with butter and which with good margarine, but have yet to have the definitive proof. Suffice it to say, many people enjoy this pie recipe with margarine--butter probably can only make it better.
