Why, an apple pie of course!

and not just any apple pie, the best one I have ever tasted in my life!!!!!! Creamy and scrumptious, I could eat the whole thing on my own. It's actually in a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a pie? Is it a tart? Is it a crumble? Well, it's a bit of all.

1) The crust belongs to a tart (my absolute favorite tart dough):

Sweet Tart Dough

from Dorie Greenspan’s amazing book “Baking: From My Home to Yours”

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

1/4 tsp salt 1 stick plus 1 tbsp (9 tbsp) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed

1 large egg yolk (and now you know where the egg white for those macarons came from!)

Pulse flour, sugar and salt in a food processor. Add butter and pulse a couple of times. Stir in the yolk and pulse again until the dough forms clumps and curds. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and very lightly and sparingly, knead just to incorporate dry ingredients.

Butter a 9-inch tart pan. Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Preheat the oven to 375 F (190C) degrees. Freeze crust at least 30 minutes before baking, this will enable you to bake without weights. Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and press it, buttered side down, on the dough. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and let cool.

2) The filling is that of a pie, adapted from a great blog -the only changes I made were to use 4 apples and 1 cup of Tofutti cream cheese instead of the mascarpone and sour cream;

3) and finally the top is a made up oatmeal crumble whose ingredients I happened to have on hand and, you guessed it, was trying use up. I would recommend using the streusel in the link above, I am sure it comes out just as yummy if not more.

You may have noticed the use of Tofutti cream cheese in the last recipes. I've found it to be a great parve (non dairy) alternative for yogurt, sour cream etc. It is quite tasty when baked, with none of the after taste I usually associate with soy/tofu based products. In fact, I've even made excellent parve "cheesecake"s with it. Soy protein has a way of holding batter together, which I discovered when I baked vegan brownies once. I wonder if the cheesecake would work with egg beaters-then it may be possible to make a vegan cheesecake too! That sounds a little like kosher shrimps, doesn't it? Have a great day...