In the kitchen with the Kirchners: Gluten Free Apple Pie

Our first Family Pie Day was a huge success. Big Papa, Little Bird and I got busy in the kitchen with our local cousins, and made Gluten free Apple Pie, from scratch, with apples from our trees!

Big Papa and I had already prepared the gluten-free dough that we would use to make two 9” crusts. Remember this dimension. It will become important later. We used Bob’s Red Mill ‘Gluten Free Pie Crust (Thanks, Bob!) and the real deal when it came to solid fats (I’m talking to you, butter, and you shortening). You can find the recipe we followed, right on the package of the pie crust mix, here.

Now back to Family Pie Day. First came the donning of the aprons. Here are the girls! Little Bird’s apron was once her cousin’s.

And the boys. With their aprons, and…

...their tape measure. More on this shortly.

First we cut our apples, emphasis on ours. If you want to read more about growing espalier apples, check out my post, here. I couldn’t be prouder of our first big apple crop. We used a variety of less-than-beauty-pageant-ready apples: some tart, others sweet; some crisp, others tender. Peeled, cored and blemishes removed, they looked mighty fine for pie-making!

The recipe we chose called for an optional tablespoon of brandy, and Calvados (apple brandy from the French region of Lower Normandy), was recommended…if you have it. Which, in fact, we did. I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to use the little bottle we got on one of our flights to France. Oh how we love you, Air France with your delicious airplane food (as airplane food goes), free champagne and brandy. We added a tablespoon (okay, maybe two) to our pie filling. I taste-tested the Calvados first to make sure our brandy was still “good.” It was very good.

Next we needed to roll out the dough. This is the place in the apple pie making process where—depending on your point of view—having two engineers in the kitchen is either a blessing or a curse.

We rolled.

We measured.

We rolled some more.

And we measured. Both engineers were at the ready to measure, and remeasure, until we were sure—very sure—that our crust would meet the 12-inch recommended size, in order to fit into the 9-inch pie pan. I imagine the boys probably left some margin for error, and I’m also certain the margin was very small. Finally it was time to pour our pie filling into the crust, and top the pie off with the second crust. After brushing the crust with an egg wash and cutting a few slits in the top, our Family Pie was ready for baking in our (new!) oven.

Then we retired to the living room to wait while the magic of pie baking transpired. Let the bead making commence.

And the dancing.

This is what everyone does while waiting for pie to bake, right? At last, the buzzer let us know our Family Pie was ready to eat. The pie came out of the oven and what a lovely pie it was.

So we all retired to the dining room, took a seat, a slice of pie, a scoop of ice cream and a glass of wine.

“Dada, can I have some wine?” “No, sweetie.”

This pie, our pie, was THE BEST PIE I’ve ever tasted. Maybe it was the homegrown apples? Or the made from scratch gluten free crust? Or the Calvados, all the way from France? Or maybe it was simply because we all lent a hand—literally—to create our Family Pie.

To family and to pie!