Claire's Crazy bakes and Kitchen Hacks Chapter 43 - Mommy's Granny-smith Apple Crumble Part 1- The Test Pie

I have never before tried to make my mom's apple pie. I have watched her do make it so many times, but have never tried myself. The burning desire for mommy's cooking and wanting to make my dear friend Hive account@lex-zaiya a treat for being such a great writing mentor and friend were both excellent reasons for me to give it a go!

I did a practice run last night, with 3 very eager test subjects, Hive account@zakludick, Hive account@aimeludick, and Hive account@merenludick; more than willing to be my Guinea pigs.

I asked Mum to send me her recipe, but since she makes it out of her head, all I got was this:

along with a voice note a few weeks later - which I can't find 😬

After giving it a go I realised that after some practice I could probably make it out of my head too!

So, here are a few things I did that worked, and a few things that I regret/ will tweak for next time.

I definitely used the right apples, the flavour was great, but my mom was overly worried about cooking them 1st. I put them in raw. They were soft but could have been ever so slightly mushier.

Next time I'll parboil them with some cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg and I'll probably throw the raisins in at the same time.

Then, I discovered that my pie dish was much deeper and wider than I thought so I doubled the recipe. This was great because it gave me just enough dough to give me a nice base and a good covering of crumble for the top, but there was WAY too much apple. Lol. I didn't know that could be a problem after eating sad store-bought apple crumbles, but I definitely overdid it with eight enormous Granny Smith apples.

The 70% baking margarine was a perfect substitute for the butter. It's half the price, but I really couldn't taste the difference and it did the job. The crumble was perfect!

I topped it with some oats and a sprinkling of castor sugar before sticking the whole thing in the oven. This gave it a lovely texture and the sugar helped it brown beautifully on top.

The smell in the house was crazy good. We were so full from supper, but we were all salivating at that yummy almost pancake-like smell.

I served it with custard, but it also goes well with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Forget cutting neat slices with this though. Lol. Either way, it tasted awesome and I am looking forward to refining the process!

Perfection almost achieved <3!