By Pam Turczyn

One of the first things that catches your eye as you walk into the Co-op are the bins of fresh, locally grown apples. All of them are grown using either organic or integrated pest management farming practices. Unlike conventionally grown apples, you can be assured that one from the Co-op is good both for your household and our ecosystem. And at an average price of $1.50/pound, apples from the Co-op are quite a bargain!

At the Co-op, we typically carry Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Gala, Honeycrisp and Fuji apples, with other varieties making occasional appearances. Lately, Gold Rush apples have been a welcome addition. Mouth-puckering Granny Smiths fall at one end of the tart-to-sweet apple spectrum, with sweet Fuji apples at the other. The rest fall somewhere in between.

While they’re great for snacking out of hand, not all apple varieties are ideal for baking. My all time favorite baking apple is the Winesap, a tart, deeply flavorful heirloom variety. If they’re not available, you can see this article for a comparison of 10 different common apple cultivars and how they bake up into pies. Granny Smiths are prized for juicing, slicing into salads or baking. Honeycrisps are just as their name implies: sweet and crisp. The flavors and textures of these two varieties meld together well in this recipe for apple pie. 

This recipe makes 6-8 servings at a cost of approximately $8 for the filling and topping.

You can use a ready-made crust, your own go-to pie crust recipe or try this gluten-free almond flour pie crust recipe which is my favorite. You just need to parbake it for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

For the pie topping:

• 1 1/4 cup walnuts

• 5 small dates

• 1 tablespoon butter

If you have a food processor, this is a breeze: just process all the ingredients briefly until they are well-distributed in the mixture. Otherwise, chop the walnuts and the dates finely and place them in a bowl with softened butter. Mix them together with your hand. It takes a little extra patience to get the dates pieces to separate but, all of a sudden, they do.

For the pie filling:

• 6 small to medium apples, about 2 pounds; 3 Granny Smiths and 3 Honeycrisps

• 3 tablespoons honey (more, if you like your pies sweet)

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

• 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (or 1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger)

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 2 tablespoons arrowroot powder

• 1 tablespoon butter 

Peel the apples and cut them into quarters vertically (from the stem to the bottom). Remove the cores. Slice the quarters into very thin wedges about 1/8-inch thick. Place them in a large bowl.

Add honey, lemon juice, cinnamon, salt and arrowroot powder. Stir thoroughly until everything is mixed together.

Gently pour the apple mixture into the parbaked and slightly cooled crust. It will seem as though so many apple slices could not possibly fit into one pie crust, but they can! Make sure they are fairly densely packed and heap up some slices in the center of the pie to make a mound.

Dot the surface with butter. Then carefully spoon the prepared walnut-date topping onto the apples, making an even layer.

Cover the pie with foil and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Then remove the foil and lower the heat to 350 degrees to bake it for another 25 minutes or until you can easily slide a knife into the pie.