apples to apple pie

So for the July 4th get-together (actually this past weekend) I thought I'd contribute an apple pie. It doesn't get much more patriotic than that, right? Except for Flag Cake, maybe, but I was on pie duty. Anyway, I wanted to make a deep dish apple pie to feed a large crowd and I wanted to try a new recipe. So I went through my recipes and found this Deep Dish Apple Pie by Sara Moulton from last fall. I have another recipe that requires pre-cooking half of the apples but this is the first one I've seen that calls for cooking down all of the apples. And it's a lot of apples. I think I had nine. Another first for me was using Macintosh apples. They're big but squat and fat and described in the article as being "applesauce apples"--which means now I'm going to have to try to make applesauce.

But back to the pie. As I poured the cooked apples out to drain I noticed they smelled really lemony. Like lemon cleaner lemony. So I'll admit to adding a few more tablespoons of sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon (have you ever heard of an apple pie that didn't call for cinnamon?). The end result was still too lemony for my taste but it was edible. The texture (of the crust and apples together) reminded me of a Mrs. Smith's apple pie.

The important thing was that everyone else liked it, but I'll probably stick with my other deep dish apple pie recipe. I should see if I have an entry for that one.