How to Bake an Apple Crisp

Learn how to bake an apple crisp in this video with Petra Cox. In this video, you'll learn how to put the pie together.

Petra Cox: I am Petra Cox with Mom's Apple Pie Company and we have just made a crumb topping for our apple pie, and next, I am going to show you how to put the whole pie together. Alright, so into our bottom crust which is frozen, we are going to put our pie filling. Apples have got nice and juicy in there, but a trick to the pie filling is to make sure that your cornstarch or whatever your thickener is, make sure that it's mixed in with the sugar and cinnamon first, so that it doesn't form any lumps inside the pie, and then toss your apples in it. And these are nice, juicy apples here. There's any number of kinds of apples you could use. You could use green golden delicious, if you like a nice crispy tart pie. Fujis are good, if you want something that has a nice honey sweetness with the tartness and a good texture, and we like to use Yorks, that's our favorite kind to use, because they are just so -- they are goofy looking apple, and they are a pain in the butt to peel, but they are worth it, because the flavor and the texture, everything is perfect for baking. So the only thing different about this pie filling versus the filling that we made for the butter crust apple pie video, is that the apples are in slightly smaller chunks. It helps them go a little flatter in the pie. It's just good when you are making a crumb topping. Make sure your hands are clean before you start, just because you will be using your hands to put this together. So here we have our crumb top, and I am just going to pour this over the pie, spread it out. You'll see that it will fall into the filling a little bit, but that's okay. It will bake up nice and crispy on top, and you can push it all the way out to the edge of the crust. And let's see, I have a little extra in here. I am just going to get some of the pecans out of that, because that's my favorite part and you could also, instead of pecans, you could use walnuts, or you could use almonds, even hazelnuts, that would be an interesting option. But pecans are so nice and buttery that it goes really well with the pie. Alright, so I got my nice big chunks out of there, and at this point we can put our pie into a preheated oven. With our convection oven, it's 325 degrees, but at your home oven, it will probably be between 375-400 degrees, and we bake it for 45-60 minutes, and the thing that you are going to look for, is some nice bubbling juices by the sides of the pie, that shows that the cornstarch has worked, and the filling is nice and thickened. Alright, so our apple crumb pie, as we call it butter pecan apple crumb, it has fully baked. The crumb topping gets a nice sort of golden color, and the pecans get a little darker. You can see here that the apple juice that has sort of come out of the apples bubbled and thickened, and that's an important thing to look for as you pull your pie out of the oven. It also starts bubbling a little bit in the oven. It should bubble for a number of minutes, just so the cornstarch can really do its work and thicken the juices in the pie, but we have actually cooled this off a little bit. As it cools off, the apples tend to settle and the crumb -- you can see how the crumb has formed a crust over the top, but I recommend serving a pie while it's still warm, but not blazingly hot, and to cut all the way through, and cut even the edges, just to make it a little easier to take it. The first one is always the hardest to get out, but we will see what we can do here. There it goes. So since it's still warm, the apples are still sort of a little gooey in there, but this is exactly what it should like. It should have nice, soft apples, but still a little crispy, depending on the kind you use, and it should have a nice rich color to the apple juice filling, and the crumb, even though it looked like it is sort of was going into the crevices between the apples, it did form a really nice crust on top. And one more note about this recipe, a really great thing you can do with this is, you can even bake it without a crust. You can bake it in a 9x13 pan if you like, that has been lightly greased, doubling the apple filling and doubling the crumble top, and that's a nice way to do a apple crisp. Then you can just scoop it out and serve it with vanilla ice-cream or you can do it as we did as a butter pecan apple crumb pie. Either way, it's sure to be a hit, and now people will be asking you for the recipe all the time. So that's how you make the butter pecan apple crumb pie, and a few other versions, enjoy it!