Your mission
The House Crust Crowning
Bake one apple pie with an all-butter crust on one half and a half-shortening crust on the other. Serve every taster a slice from each side, unlabeled, then hold a vote and crown the winner as your house crust.
Bonus challenge: Give out silly extra awards, like the Flakiest Fork Award for the best crunch description and the Super Sleuth Prize for whoever guessed which slice was butter.
Get your family or friends around one apple pie with a secret. Half the crust is all-butter and half is butter mixed with shortening, and only the baker knows which is which. Everyone tastes both slices blind, votes, and your kitchen gets its very own house crust.
Every family has opinions about pie, and today those opinions finally go to a vote. You'll mix two simple doughs, press them side by side into one pie plate, and fill the whole thing with cinnamon apples so the crust is the only difference. If you've never made pie dough, you're in good company. It's just flour, fat, salt and cold water, and a lumpy, patched crust still tastes great. Then comes the blind taste test and the big crowning.
Pie is a dish people remember from someone's kitchen, and a crust recipe is the kind of thing that gets handed down. Running a blind taste test turns everyone at the table into a judge, and the winner becomes part of how your house does things. Years from now someone will ask why you always use that crust, and you'll get to tell them.
Top gear to make this quest great.
Pull it off
It holds your two-sided pie, and the glass lets you see when the bottom is golden.
It rolls both doughs into circles big enough to line the plate.
It's the secret ingredient in crust B, the challenger to all-butter.
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Your judges are hungry and your secret is safe, so let's gather the goods. Essential: a 9-inch pie plate, a rolling pin, flour, salt and sugar, 1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, a little vegetable shortening, and about 6 apples with cinnamon and a lemon. Handy extras: a pastry blender to cut fat into flour faster, a baking sheet under the pie to catch drips, and foil to keep the edges from over-browning. Invite your tasters for the afternoon so the pie has time to cool.
Time to make the rivals. In two bowls, mix 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon sugar each. Bowl A gets 1 stick of cold butter in small cubes. Bowl B gets 1/2 stick butter plus 1/4 cup shortening. Press the fat in with a dough blender, the tool with thick steel blades that chop butter into flour fast so your warm hands barely touch it. Stop when it looks like crumbs with pea-size bits. Add ice water a tablespoon at a time, 3 to 5 total, until it holds together.
While the doughs rest, the filling gets ready. Flatten each dough into a disk, wrap it, and chill for an hour. Peel and slice about 6 apples thin, then toss them with 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Your kitchen will already smell like a bakery, and the tasters will start hovering.
Here's the clever part. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Roll each dough into a rough circle a little wider than your 9.5-inch glass pie plate, cut each in half, and lay one half-circle of each into the plate, pinching them together down the middle. The clear glass lets you peek at both bottoms later to see which side browned best. Pile in the apples. Top each side with the other half-circle from its matching dough, pinch the edges and cut a few slits. Make one tiny secret notch in the crimp on the butter side.
Into the oven it goes, on a baking sheet. Bake 20 minutes at 425°F, then lower to 375°F for 35 to 40 minutes more, until the top is golden and juice bubbles through the slits. Cover the edges with foil if they brown too fast. Slip on silicone pinch mitts to pull it out. They're rated for heat up to 446°F, so they can handle this oven, and their grippy surface helps you hold the sheet steady. Then let it cool at least 2 hours so the filling sets. Can your tasters resist peeking?
Send the tasters out of the kitchen. The baker cuts a slice from each side and sets them on plates marked A and B underneath, so nothing shows on top. Bring them out and let everyone tap, sniff and taste both. Which is flakier? Which tastes richer? Which holds up better under the fork? Then everyone points to their favorite on the count of three.
Drumroll, please. Count the votes, then flip the plates and reveal which crust was which. Did the butter fans guess right? Was it a landslide or a squeaker? Give the winner a grand name like The Golden Flake and declare it your house crust. Then finish off the rest of the pie together, because the losing side is still pretty tasty.
You baked a pie with a secret, ran a real blind tasting and gave your family its own crust. Now pass the winning recipe to someone who'll bake it next.
You bring the curiosity. We've found the tools.
Pull it off
It holds your two-sided pie, and the glass lets you see when the bottom is golden.
It rolls both doughs into circles big enough to line the plate.
A wooden or French-style rolling pin.
Get on Amazon · $3.97 — Rolling pinwhat to look for & our pick →
It's the secret ingredient in crust B, the challenger to all-butter.
Solid vegetable shortening for baking.
Get on Amazon · $7.97 — Vegetable shorteningwhat to look for & our pick →
They protect your hands when the bubbling pie comes out of the oven.
Heat-resistant mitts for handling hot dishes.
Get on Amazon · $8.49 — Oven mittswhat to look for & our pick →
It cuts the cold fat into the flour fast, before your hands warm it up.
A handheld tool with curved blades for mixing fat into flour.
Get on Amazon · $12.99 — Pastry blenderwhat to look for & our pick →RELATED GEAR GUIDE
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