Gluten Free Apple Pie

I have been getting better at making baked goods that are gluten free.  It is pretty overwhelming at first and less than encouraging when the things I make turn out gross looking and nasty.  Here is how I work around GF issues.

My mom had made a bunch of apple pie filling and gave me a jar of it to use.  So use it I did.  I normally go to a recipe that I use often and love or I go to the The Pioneer Woman's Website or Pinterest and find a recipe that I want to try.  Today I searched Pioneer Woman's food blog and found a Perfect Pie Crust recipe.  I love how she takes pictures of everything and carefully goes step by step.  I used my Maninis gluten free flour and substituted that for the regular flour.  Since I really love butter, who doesn't right, I put 1 cup of butter and only 1/2 cup of shortening in to my pie dough.  I did find that I needed another 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of flour to make the right consistency of pie dough.  Once the consistency was good, Hannah helped me wrap up the dough in plastic wrap and we went for a walk.  

When we got back we were ready to go.  When you are making pie with gluten free flour you definitely need to do things a little differently.  The dough has no gluten to hold it together and so it is a bit, ok a lot, fragile.  I normally lay down wax paper or plastic wrap and dust it with a good amount of GF flour.  Place the ball of dough on top, sprinkle some more flour and then another peice of wax paper or plastic wrap.  Roll out the dough to the desired thickness between the two sheets of paper.  Add flour as needed to keep it from sticking.  When it it ready, I roll it gently around my rolling pin and place it in my pie pan.  It will almost alway rip at some point in this process.  Just patch it back up and pretend it is rustic.  I dumped in my mom's pie filling and rolled out the top layer for the pie.  Once it was on and the edges were sealed, Hannah brushed on a beaten egg wash and then we popped it in the oven.   Since I didn't have the bake time for an apple pie I looked on pinterest and found this:  Double Crust Apple Pie.  So I baked it just like they recommended and it was perfect.  

I had a bunch of dough left over, so Hannah and I made pie crust cookies.  I wish I would have taken a picture.  They were beautiful and flaky and delicious.  We rolled out the left over dough.  Placed it on a cookie sheet and Hannah brushed the left over egg on each one.  Then we sprinkled on cinnamon and sugar and baked it.  They were amazing.  I want to make more pie dough just to make these again.

Of course Hannah had to eat like half of the dough.  I helped her since I too love pie dough.  Then she carefully licked up all the extra flour that spilled.  What a helper I have!!  Don't you just wish you had one of these?

And there you have it!  A perfect apple pie!