I’ll be the first to admit that serving apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese is not necessarily a common thing to do and it certainly wasn’t a family tradition. In fact, I was a young adult when Uncle first told me about it. Since then, I’ve enjoyed apple pie with cheddar cheese several times although, to be honest, I’ll take vanilla ice cream before cheddar cheese any day. (I am my Mother’s son, after all.) Still, I was happy with my apple pie adorned with the occasional slice of cheddar until one day a few months ago. I was busy doing whatever and, in the background, there was a Food Network program on the TV. It was one of those shows I’ve grown to dislike, with people talking about how great some dish is at this diner or that restaurant without ever telling how it’s made. Well, I watch these programs to learn new techniques, to get recipes, to see a dish prepared. If I want to hear people talk about how good a dish is, I’ll go to a diner and survey the people eating at the counter. Anyway, a restaurant was mentioned that was known for its pie and which featured an apple pie with cheddar cheese in the crust. Aside from that comment and seeing some grated cheddar dumped into a commercial mixer, the actual recipe was left a mystery. Did I mention how much I dislike these shows? Anyway, my quest began that very day …

In the weeks that followed, I baked a number of test pies. I varied the amount of grated cheddar cheese in the crust from 2 to 6 ounces per crust. I adjusted the amount of fat in the crusts and even swapped spices in the filling. And left in my wake was a trail of apple pies that stretched from the shores of Lake Michigan to those of Lake Huron, not to mention devoted taste testers in both locales. In the end, I settled on using 4 ounces of grated, sharp cheddar cheese and 7 tbsp of fat per crust while, in the pie filling, I replaced nutmeg with cardamom. The result was a pie with a crust that was manageable when raw and, when baked, was relatively light with the distinctive — but not overpowering — taste of cheddar. Success!

With the cheddar question out of the way, let’s talk filling. Just like with our Thingamajig, I use both tart and sweet apples. For the sweet, I find that Fuji work best because they, like Granny Smiths, hold up well during baking. I prefer the apples in my pie filling to be in chunks rather than thinly sliced and that way they remain somewhat firm when baked. Once the apples are peeled, cored, and chopped, I heat them in a saucepan with some butter. All I’m doing is heating them through; I take them off the heat when their juices first begin to appear in the pan. I’ve found that this helps to prevent a finished pie that has a gap of over an inch between the apple pie filling and the crust “dome” above it. It’s important, though, to pull the apples off of the heat as soon as they start to render their juices and to cool them completely before assembling the pie. Cook them too long or fill the pie while they’re still hot and your apples will not be at all crisp when the pie has finished baking.

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No pie dome here!

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The Apple with a Cheddar Cheese Crust Recipe

Ingredients

• For Apple Pie Filling
• 6 Granny Smiths (or similar, tart apples) peeled, cored, and sliced evenly
• 2 Fuji (or similar, sweet apple) peeled, cored, and sliced evenly
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup raisins, soaked in hot water and drained (optional)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup AP flour
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp cardamom (or nutmeg)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• sugar

Directions

• For apple pie filling
1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the apple slices and lemon juice. Stir to coat the apples.
2. In a sauce pan large enough to hold the apples, melt the butter over medium heat.
3. Add the apples and sauté just until the apples begin to give up their liquid. Do not cook until the apples grow soft.
4. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together the sugar, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt.
5. Return heated apple pieces to large mixing bowl.
6. Add the raisins, if using, and spice mixture to the apples and gently stir until the apples are coated evenly.
7. Set aside to cool completely and until the pie crusts are ready.

• For Pie Crust – Best if each crust is made individually in the food processor.
1. Add flour, cheddar cheese, and salt to the processor. Pulse it a few times to combine the 3 ingredients.
2. Add the very cold butter & shortening cubes.
3. Pulse the machine 3 times, with each pulse lasting a 3-count. Your ingredients will now be lightly mixed. If need be, pulse again.
4. With the machine running, add the vinegar and then slowly add the ice water. Do not add so much that a ball of dough forms. Remove the lid and, with your hands, test the dough to see if a ball of dough can be formed.
   1. If so, turn the dough until a very lightly floured service, form a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
   2. If a dough ball will not form, add a little more water, pulse the machine a couple of times, and test it again. When you can form a ball of dough, follow step A above.
5. While the dough rests in the fridge, prepare the 2nd crust.

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Fresh from the oven

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Variations

This recipe is more concerned about the crust than it is the pie filling. So, if you prefer sweet apples, walnuts, or currants, use them. If you hate raisins, ditch them. If you don’t like or haven’t any cardamom, use nutmeg. In short, change the filling to suit your tastes. The same goes with the crust. If you find that adding cheddar to your favorite pie crust recipe makes a better pie, then please come back here and tell us about it.

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Notes

One last thing about the crust. Add too little cheddar and you won’t taste it; too much and the pastry dough is rendered unmanageable. And even under the best of circumstances, the cheddar cheese will affect the crust’s flakiness. So, it’s basically a trade-off. The trick is to add as much cheddar cheese flavor as you can without sacrificing too many of the crust’s better qualities. My taste testers and I agree that this recipe “works.” If you try it, I hope you feel the same way.

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I’d planned to start this post by extolling the apple and its many uses but it’s hard to sing a fruit’s praises when there’s a thingamajig dangling atop your blog, metaphorically speaking, of course.  So, I might as well explain the name of this dish and get it over with — in a minute or two.

I’ve been busy elsewhere the past few days, so, these acknowledgements are a tad late. Last Friday, Kristy, of Eat, Play, Love was kind enough to pass me the Versatile Blogger Award, as did Eva of Kitchen Inspirations the very next day. Kristy’s blog is a family affair, featuring 2 gourmands-in-the-making, Mr. N and Miss A. Her recipes come from around the World and the blog’s stars are adorable. 4 spoons all the way! Eva’s blog is a treat, as well. Visit her blog and you may find yourself having brunch in a Montreal café or sharing a Moroccan feast that she researched and prepared herself. And every post is beautifully photographed. If you haven’t already done so, do yourself a favor and visit these 2 wonderful blogs. And as for the award itself, I am very thankful for the honor but, having just received this award a week ago, I won’t be passing it along. (As I mentioned to Kristy, I fear putting us all into some sort of infinite loop.) I will, however, refer you to my post of a week ago. Now, about that thingamajig …

Several years ago, at about this time of the year, my cooking shows were all featuring apple pies. Now, I love apple pie but had shied away from making them because my pie crusts were terrible and the poor apples turned to mush. That Fall, I decided to teach myself how to bake a pie and, every week to 10 days, I baked an apple pie. Well, with parents who were children of the Great Depression, we learned very early on that one  never wastes food. Period. So, if I made a pie, I ate a pie. True, eventually my pies got better and I was confident enough to share them with friends — but I ate a whole lotta pie before then. Still, even though I eventually settled on recipes for both crust and filling, one pie is a lot if you live alone, as Zia and I often commiserated. As a result, neither of us baked apple pie because we didn’t want to be greeted by the same pie every time we entered our kitchens for the next week or so. That was until 2 years ago. It was about that time that we both saw cooks on television prepare apples in a form that was part pie and part tart. They called them “open-faced” pies or tarts but, to our minds, they’re neither. So, we started calling them apple “thingamajigs” and the confusion ended, at least between the two of us. Best of all, an apple thingamajig is half the size of a pie and, therefore, better suited to our swinging single lifestyles.

Now, there are plenty of recipes around for thingamajigs and mine is based upon my apple pie recipe, with one notable exception. I include cheddar cheese in my apple pie crust but not here. Being a thingamajig has only one crust, the cheddar cheese flavor is too mild to be noticed and adding more cheese to the recipe only serves to make the crust unmanageable. So, the cheddar is reserved for double-crusted pies and it’s probably just as well. (My apple pie recipe with a cheddar crust is forthcoming.) A thingamajig, being open-faced, is less “runny” than a normal pie due to evaporation during baking. (See Notes.) As you’ll see and much to my liking, the apple slices remain firm and more apple flavor retained. As for the apples themselves, I always use tart apples, preferably Granny Smith, but I also add a sweet one — Fuji or Honeycrisp — to the filling, usually in a 3 tart to 1 sweet apple ratio. That way, you get an occasional taste of sweet among the sour. Raisins or currants will do the same. To that end, I don’t use a lot of sugar nor a number of spices in my apple filling. Why use tart apples if you’re going to add a ton of sugar and spice to the filling? For me, when it comes to apple filling, less is more.

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The Apple Thingamajig Recipe

Ingredients

• For Pie Crust
  • 1 1/2 cups AP flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 5 tbsp vegetable shortening, cut into cubes and well-chilled
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into cubes and well-chilled
  • 3 tbsp ice water
  • 1 tbsp cider vinegar

• For Apple Filling
  • 3 Granny Smiths (or similar, tart apples) peeled, cored, and sliced evenly
  • 1 Fuji (or similar, sweet apple) peeled, cored, and sliced evenly
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tbsp dark brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp AP flour
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/8 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • sugar
  • butter

Directions

• For Pie Crust
  1. Add flour and salt to the processor. Pulse it a few times to mix the 2 ingredients.
  2. Add the very cold butter & shortening cubes.
  3. Pulse the machine 3 times, with each pulse lasting a 3-count. Your ingredients will now be lightly mixed. If need be, pulse again.
  4. With the machine running, add the vinegar and then slowly add the ice water. Do not add so much that a ball of dough forms. Remove the lid and, with your hands, test the dough to see if a ball of dough can be formed.
     1. If so, turn the dough until a very lightly floured service, form a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
     2. If a dough ball will not form, add a little more water, pulse the machine a couple of times, and test it again. When you can form a ball of dough, follow step A above.
  5. While the dough rests in the fridge, prepare the filling.

• For Apple Filling
  1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the apple slices and lemon juice. Stir to coat the apples.
  2. In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
  3. Add the spice mixture to the apples and gently stir until the apples are coated evenly.
  4. Set aside until the pie crust is ready.

• Assembly
  1. Roll the dough as if making a bottom crust for a 9 inch pie.
  2. Place the apples in the center of the dough circle, leaving a 2 inch border around the filling. Creative types may wish to carefully place the apples in a circular design. (That is soo not me.)
  3. Carefully lift the border, working your way around the filling, crimping as needed. You are creating the crust for your open-faced thingamajig.
  4. Dot the top of the apple filling with small bits of butter.
  5. With a pastry brush, lightly coat the exposed crust with the beaten egg. Sprinkle the sugar.
  6. Place in a pre-heated 375* oven and bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until golden brown.
  7. Should not be served piping hot but may be served warm.

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Variations

Just like its cousins the tart and pie, you can add ingredients to the filling to suit your own tastes. In the past, I’ve added raisins, currants, and chopped walnuts to the filling and enjoyed each. And, of course, you can change this dessert completely by selecting different apples. I like tart; you may prefer sweet. Lucky for us, there are plenty of apples to choose from.

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Notes

Because there are fewer pie juices to contain, this pie crust can be rolled thinner than you would for a pie and, as a result, you can easily make 2 thingamajigs — as I often do and did today. I keep one for myself and give the other to a friend.  I believe it was Confucius who said, “It is easier to give someone a thingamajig than it is to give half a pie.”

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