Recipe Box: My Wedding Apple Pie

While traditional wedding cakes are delicious, I knew that I was going to go a different route for my own big day. Apple pie is my very favorite dessert to bake and to eat, and I just couldn’t imagine serving our guests anything else. So, a few weeks before my wedding, my dear friends Lauren Lowstan and Hannah Skvarla helped me to assemble and freeze over 50 apple pies (talk about good friends!). Lauren is a professional baker, so she shared her commercial kitchen, freezers, and expertise with us. We were able to use my own apple pie recipe, and then on the day of the wedding all Lauren had to do was pop them into the oven and they were ready to go! I am pleased to say that everyone loved them, and they gave our wedding day such a lovely personal touch.

Over the years, I have worked on perfecting my apple pie recipe and today I want to share the finished product with you. Here’s how you can recreate the apple pie that my guests and I enjoyed on my wedding day…

Lauren Conrad’s Apple Pie Recipe

makes 1 pie

Ingredients:

• 8 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 3 Tbsp flour
• ¼ cup caramel sauce (recipe below)
• 1 recipe pie crust , divided into two pieces and refrigerated for at least 1 hour
• egg wash (1 egg mixed with 1 Tbsp water)
• sanding sugar

Caramel sauce

• ½ cup butter
• 3 Tbsp flour
• ¼ cup water
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup brown sugar

Melt butter in a saucepan. Add flour to form a paste. Add water and sugar, and bring to a boil. Turn heat down and simmer for about 10 minutes. (You want the sugars to be melted in and not grainy anymore.) Note: you don’t want to turn this into a dark caramel sauce—just a good sugar/butter mixture that caramelizes once baked. 

Instructions:

1. Mix apples, sugars, flour, and cinnamon all together in a bowl.
2. Roll out your pie dough circles and add one into a pie pan. Add the apple mixture into the pan and drizzle caramel sauce over apples. Cover with another crust and flute the edges. Cut vents in top, or use cut cookie cutters to cut out shapes in the tops of pies. (I do this before adding to the top of the pie.)
3. Brush top of pie with egg wash, and sprinkle with sanding sugar. Bake pie in a 425-degree oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350, and bake for an additional 35 to 45 minutes, until top is golden and the juices are bubbling.

Making apple pie is a lot easier than you might think! Depending on the occasion, I also love to prepare the crust in different shapes and cutouts.

And here is one of the apple pies from my wedding day…

Will you be trying out this recipe?

Let me know in the comments below.

XO Lauren

Photo: yoni goldberg for laurenconrad.com