r/cooking· umami_bomb@umami_bomb

Why your apple pie leaves a cave under the top crust, and how to stop it

Apple season question I get every year. You pile the apples high, bake it, cut it, and there's a hollow between the crust and a sunken layer of filling. The apples shrank. Raw slices are full of air and water, and in the oven they collapse after the top crust has already set in place. Two fixes that actually work. First, pick apples that hold their shape. McIntosh is lovely but it breaks down into sauce. Northern Spy, Granny Smith and Honeycrisp keep their slices. Second, precook the filling gently before it goes into the crust. According to the testing that America's Test Kitchen and Kenji Lopez-Alt have both published, warming the slices slowly lets them firm up so they hold together instead of turning to mush, and the shrinking happens in the pan instead of under your pastry. Bonus: you get to taste and fix the seasoning before it's sealed in a crust forever.