Friday Pie-Day: Autumn Surprise Pie

The delicious combination of produce in this pie will set your tastebuds for autumn! And the special crust just intensifies the flavor. Get ready for an autumn surprise!

The surprise, of course, is in the 3 key ingredients – apples, pears, and raisins. All very autumnal. We had some golden raisins too, so I used half sultanas and half regular raisins.

So after you spend about 3 years of your life slicing up apples and pears (I sliced mine very thinly)…

…You get to combine them all! Don’t they all look so beautiful and full of promise?

This was the point when I made the special pie crust. It is basically the same as our regular pie crust recipe, but with the scrumptious addition of sugar and cinnamon! (I got the idea from Chasing Delicious’ “sweet cinnamon pie crust” recipe at the bottom of this page.)

Also, we ran out of Crisco, so I ended up substituting applesauce for it, which turned out great! It was easier to combine the ingredients, and it still rolled out nicely! That could be partly because I froze it for about 10 minutes before rolling it out, but I’ll be trying the applesauce substitution again! Why not get more flavor in your crust?

Put away the other half of the dough (in the freezer) while you make the pie filling now! Just add all the other spices and ingredients…

…And toss them together to make all the fruit be coated with a layer of spicy goodness!

Then you get to dump the filling into the pie pan! You will want it to be overly full, since the fruit will cook down in the oven.

Now you can take the remaining pie dough out of the freezer, roll it out, cut it into strips, and make a beautiful lattice top crust! Usually I brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle it with turbinado sugar, but I didn’t want anything to take away from the cinnamon flavor in the crust.

The taste was out of this world! The sultanas (golden raisins) added another dimension – this was an apple pie on steroids!

Get a load of that beauty! It’s enough to turn any 80 degree day into an autumn surprise!

Autumn Surprise Pie 

(recipes from Taste of Home and Chasing Delicious)

CINNAMON CRUST 

(makes top and bottom crust):

2¼ cup flour

1 tsp. salt

3 T. sugar

3 tsp. cinnamon

⅓ cup Crisco

⅓ cup applesauce

6-8 T. cold water

PIE FILLING:

5 cups peeled sliced tart apples

2 cups peeled sliced ripe pears

½ cup raisins (regular, golden, or a combination of both)

½ cup sugar

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. nutmeg

¼ tsp. cloves

¼ tsp. ginger

1 tsp. vanilla

1. Combine crust ingredients and freeze dough for 10 minutes. Divide in half. Roll out bottom crust and place in pan. Freeze remaining half while preparing pie filling.
2. In a large bowl, combine apples, pears, and raisins.
3. Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger; add to fruit mixture and toss.
4. Sprinkle with vanilla; toss well. Spoon into crust.
5. Roll out remaining pastry; make a lattice crust. Brush with egg or milk and sprinkle with sugar if desired.
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake 30-35 minutes longer. Cool on a wire rack.