A Thanksgiving Apple Pie that will make you grateful

Today I will teach you a Thanksgiving Apple Pie perfect for sharing with your loved ones.

I find it quite ironic that Thanksgiving – a day that should inspire us to be grateful – now comes with quite a bit of baggage. It is in the epicenter of the (online) shopping craze for Christmas presents. And even the Thanksgiving feast itself feels like it has become more about excessive consumption than about shared thankfulness.

But bake this cake, invite some friends and I promise you will feel the real Thanksgiving magic.

It is surprisingly easy to make even for people with little to no baking experience – and this apple pie will put you and your guests in a mindset of peaceful appreciation and companionship.

Chris with Apple Pie — The day I learned to make this pie from my friend Kati back in 2015.

Ingredients:

For the dough:

300g flour
200g butter at room temperature
100g sugar
1 egg
A pinch of salt

For the Filling:

6 apples (a firm, sour type like Boskoop is ideal)
50g of sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
Vanilla extract equal to 1 pod
optional: 50g of raisins (if you add them, I would cut 20g of sugar)
A pinch of salt

You will also need a 26cm cake pan – ideally a springform – and a rolling pin for the dough as well as a grate for the apples.

Thanksgiving Apple Pie Ingredients — Apart from a lot of love, you don’t need many different ingredients to make this delightful cake

Apple Pie step-by-step

Preparation:

Mix together all dough ingredients in a bowl.
Knead the dough by hand until it is nice and even.
Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes – a colder dough is much easier to roll out.
Grate the apples into another bowl, discarding the cores (or in my case: feeding them to the dog).
Add the sugar, vanilla extract, salt and optional raisins and mix well.

Thanksgiving Apple Pie Ingredients filled up — The only topless picture you will find on this blog.

Cake Assembly:

Preheat your oven to 170°/335°F.
Grease your cake pan with butter or, my preference, line it with parchment paper.
Dust your work surface and rolling pin with flour, roll out 2/3rds of the dough to ~31 cm in diameter and transfer it to the cake pan (here is an amazing 2 min tutorial that makes this a breeze). This should give you about 2.5 cm of crust above the cake bottom.
Drop your apple filling into the cake and level it out evenly.
Roll out the rest of the dough and carefully transfer it to the top of the cake (the clear wrap trick shown in the tutorial is really essential for this).
Remove any surplus dough hanging over the edges and use it to fill gaps where needed (any leftover pieces of dough is yours to enjoy right now).elps getting the saltiness just right.
Bake the cake until the crust turns golden (~35-45 mins depending on your oven)
Let the cake rest for 30 minutes before taking it out of the spring form.