Pie-Off offers tried and true recipes
By Jennifer Olvera Contributor November 22, 2011 10:48AM
Oak Park Saturday 10/8/11 Judge, Chelsie Miller takes a closer look at the pies during the Pie Off at the OP Library. | Jerry Daliege~for Sun-Times Media
UNCLE DAVID’S BROWN PAPER BAG APPLE PIE FILLING
Yields filling for one double-crust pie
4 to 4 1/2 cups of thinly sliced, peeled Granny Smith apples
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
A few dashes of vanilla extract
Streusel:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
A few dashes of vanilla
Preheat oven to 375 degrees (or 400 degrees, depending on your oven).
Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the apples and mix by hand. Then place in pie shell.
To make the streusel, combine all ingredients in a large bowl until big crumbs are broken up. Crumble over the top of the apples. Even it out lightly, but don’t tamp it down at all. Place upper crust on top.
Place pie inside a brown paper grocery bag, and fold the opening shut. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 50 minutes. Then, cut open the bag and bake for 10-15 more minutes.
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Updated: December 26, 2011 8:17AM
It was a pitch-perfect fall day: golden sunshine, blowing leaves and warm temps. Then there was pie — lots and lots of pie.
Hosting its first-ever Pie-Off baking competition, the main branch of the Oak Park Public Library welcomed a dozen wannabe winners in its sun-drenched Veterans Room on Saturday.
They placed their goods on red and white-checked tables with white-knuckled anticipation.
Participants ran the gamut, from first-time bakers to professional pastry chefs and old-hat competitors. The results were as mixed as one might expect. I know this first-hand, as I served as a judge, along with Pastry Chef Chelsie Miller of Oak Park’s mad-popular Sugar Fixé Patisserie bakery and the library’s own Rebecca Malinowski of the Adult and Teen Services department.
There was a lot of creativity going on, with some ideas (Tanya McHale’s farmers’ market peach mascarpone) working better, however admirable, than others (Ian Nosek’s bacon-bourbon pecan pie, spiked with Maker’s 46).
There were classics, like a family recipe for pumpkin or blueberry from the crew at Chicago’s Bleeding Heart Bakery, to a glistening almond-pear tart. An admirable take on French silk provided temptation, too.
Ultimately, though, it was Oak Parker Kevin Nelson who nabbed best-overall title with his baked uncle’s brown-bag apple pie. Featuring a streusel topping beneath a perfectly wrought, properly crunchy crust, its apple filling was dry — not at all soupy or syrupy — with the kind of tartness you’d hope for and the intact texture such endeavors demand.
“I started making it in early spring,” Nelson says of the recipe that appeared at family gatherings throughout childhood. “It took a lot of perfecting. The first time, it was runny. So I called my uncle to troubleshoot. The answer was to use fewer apples than the original recipe suggests.”
Then came challenges with oven temperature.
“Times and temperatures required vary by oven,” he says, clutching his winnings: a pie dish and gift certificate to Flavour Cooking School in Forest Park.
As it turns out, his sixth attempt was a charm.
Teen and Adult Services Librarian Juanita Fisher got props in the “taste” category, her ugly duckling of a fresh raspberry-topped buttermilk pie a total delight. (She received a bench scraper and apron for that.)
Meanwhile, competition veteran Jody Steele of Oak Park—who won another library branch’s baking competition—received acknowledgement (and a tart pan with cake stand) for appearance. Her apple pie with homemade vanilla bean ice cream featured a cute, colored sugar apple and leaves atop flaky crust.
Nelson, who swore to keep the family’s crust recipe a secret, nonetheless shared his filling how-to. If you’re interested in perfecting the baked-in-a-bag approach, use the version from Wisconsin’s The Elegant Farmer (www.elegantfarmer.com) as a guide.
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