This past weekend, in an effort to use up some more of the pears from our pear tree, I decided to make some apple-pear pie. Our next door neighbor, who just moved back into her house, had an abundance of apples weighing down her little apple tree. Along with the pears, I used some of her apples, which were quite tart and crunchy and perfect for pie. I’ve finally settled on a recipe for pie crust which is so easy and uses the simplest ingredients (I would recommend doubling the recipe for this one). I knew I wanted to make individual sized pies in these cute little white ramekins:
Making individual pies would make it easy to deliver some pie to my neighbor. This can easily be made as a single large pie–just roll out the dough for a regular pie pan. I made the crust dough first and put it in the fridge to chill. While the dough was chilling, I prepared the filling.
The Recipe for Apple-Pear Pie
2 pie crust dough
5 small-medium tart apples
5 small-medium pears
1/4 cup agave nectar
2 Tbls brown sugar
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbls flour
Preheat the oven to 425 F. Wash the apples and pears, core them, and slice them thinly. No need to peel them unless you prefer it. Toss the fruit in a large bowl with sweeteners, lemon juice, spices, salt, and flour. [Note: You may want to add more sweetener if you like a really sweet pie. It will also depend on how tart your fruit is. Mix the fruit together with the other ingredients and taste for sweetness. You can always add a little extra if you think it needs it.]
Set fruit aside while you roll out the pastry. Roll out the pastry either for small ramekin-sized pies, or one large pie. Line your pie dish(es) with half the crust.
This is where I ran into some problems. I saw right away that I wasn’t going to have enough crust for 6 small pies (for the tops and bottoms), so I decided to just make 4 pies and throw together 2 little crisps with the remaining apples (see recipe below).
To complete the pies, add a generous scoop of the apples to the dish(es), mounding the fruit a bit:
Roll out and cut appropriate top-sized dough to cover the pies. Pinch together the top and bottom crusts to seal the pie. Cut little air vents into the top crust:
Bake at 425 F for 10 minutes. Then turn the heat down to 350 F and bake for approximately 30 minutes more, until the crust is golden brown.
The Recipe for Apple-Pear Crisp
3/4 cup oats
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 Tbls agave nectar (or a little extra sugar)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/3 cup sunflower or vegetable oil
If you want to make a full pie-sized crisp you can double this recipe. This was enough for 2 VERY generously topped individual crisps. Prepare the apple-pear mixture as you would for the pie (above). Spoon fruit into the baking dish:
Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add oil and mix well. All ingredients should moist when combined, but not soggy. If you need to add a little extra oil, feel free to do so (one tsp at a time):
Spoon topping onto fruit and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. If you happen to be making both pie and crisp at once, you can bake the crisp according to the pie directions as I did:
Serve both the pie and the crisp warm with vanilla coconut milk ice cream or deliver a little basket of warm apple-pear goodness to a friend or neighbor. If you remember from my last trip to the goodwill, I got this cute basket and dishtowel for delivering some treats to my neighbor:
Do you prefer pie or crisp? I never can decide which I like better, which was one perk to making both at once!
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