Pie #13: Peace Pie (Salty Caramel Apple Pie)

Several weeks ago my friend Savannah made salty caramel birthday brownies for me.  They were very good and have been on my mind ever since.  Of course I've been searching for a way to incorporate salty caramel into a pie.  I toyed with the idea adding it to chocolate, pecan, apple, or a caramel-based pie (among several others).  Then it hit me - I would make a salty caramel pear pie!  I loved the idea of salty and caramel mixing with the delicately sweet pear, and looked forward to it all week.

Adding a little bit of pressure to the week was the fact that this pie was going to be shared at Peace, Pies, & Prophets, a comedy fundraiser for Christian Peacemaker Teams featuring the comedy performance of Ted and Co. and opened by the musical performance of Sour Cherry Pie.  (Yes, that's a shameless plug for my husband's band - more to come on that in a future week.)  At this event there will be pies up for auction as well as pies to be consumed on site.  Knowing people are hoping for tasty pies, I decided a practice pie was a necessity!

 

This week turned out to be a week of changing plans.  I purchased some not-quite-ripe pears towards the middle of the week only to find that they still weren't ripe at the end of the week.  Going with a backup plan, we now have salty caramel apple pie.  I also debated whether I wanted to create my own recipe or follow one that I found online on the Cooking Channel's website.  It looked delicious and I figured it would probably turn out better than the pie in my head, so I decided to go with it.  However, I simply couldn't make their caramel turn out right.  Therefore, the actual pie will have a variant of my family's caramel recipe (that I've been successful in making previously).  Grabbing some ideas from the recipe online and some from Aunt Lu's caramel recipe we have this week's pie.

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Salty Caramel Apple Pie

Ingredients:
2 pie crusts

1/2 cup sugar (white)
1/2 cup Karo
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 stick butter
splash vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt (ground coarsely)

2 lemons
5-6 medium to large apples

1/3 cup raw sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg

milk
raw sugar
sea salt (ground coarsely)

Pie Algorithm:

1. Apple Seasoning: Mix sugar, flour, and spices in small bowl.  Set aside.

2. Juice lemons into a medium bowl and add some water (about 1.5 cups). Set aside.

3. Caramel: Combine sugar, karo, half of cream, and butter.  Bring to a boil and add other half of cream slowly.  Cook slowly to 230F*.  Remove from heat and mix in vanilla and sea salt.  Let sit while preparing apples.

4. Apples: WORKING QUICKLY (but not so quickly that you slice your finger), core, peel, and thinly slice apples - a mandolin slicer works quite well!  Put slices in lemon-water bowl, making sure they have been coated with the lemon juice.  Drain the apples well, and mix the spices into the apples by hand.

5. Place 1/3 of the apples then 1/3 of the caramel in the shell.  Make sure to stir caramel each time so all the salt doesn't settle to the bottom of the pan.  Also apples should be stacked in a way that minimizes open space.  Continue to layer 1/3 apples and 1/3 caramel two more times.  (Save a bit of caramel for the top crust!)

6. Lattice the top crust on the final layer of caramel.  Brush with a bit of milk, sprinkle with some sugar and salt.  Drizzle remaining caramel over the entire pie.

7. Bake at 375F for 20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 325F and bake for 25-35 minutes more.  (Cook until apples are just soft.)  Filling may bubble over - a pan under the pie helps alleviate an oven covered in burnt caramel!

*When making caramels as candy, you want to bring your liquid to 240F (soft ball stage).  However, because this batch of caramel was going to bake for a while longer I decided to heat the caramel only to 230F in the hopes of preventing another surprise - salty toffee apple pie!

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 The pie pictured at left is the mini-tester pie.  Overall it had a good flavor, but the caramel was too buttery for my taste.  As mentioned earlier I had trouble making the caramel turn out - the first batch turned to powder and the second batch was on its way to powder so I quickly threw in the cream.  Thus it never had the chance to brown and appears visually absent on the pie.  The flavor was there though and while I'm not a huge apple pie lover, the mixture of salty caramel and apple was definitely a plus!  Note the very thin strata of apples!

Pie update:  After waking at 6AM to make my second attempt (pie at right), I was really hoping this pie (the caramel specifically) would turn out better.  I am very hopeful!  While I haven't yet tasted this version, it appears to have turned out just as I had hoped!  We'll see if the crowd likes it!