Apple Crumb Pie

12 Servings
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes

Apple Crumb Pie is the perfect combination of apple pie and apple crisp in one holiday dessert your whole family will LOVE with a buttery crisp crumble topping and cinnamon apple slices.

If you’ve already tried my recipes for Apple Slab Pie, Apple Crisp and Southern Fried Apples and they were a huge hit, you should keep up your winning streak with apple crumb pie.

Apple Crumb Pie SliceAPPLE CRUMB PIE

Apple crumb pie is not only yummy, it has the easiest pie crust you’ll ever make. The filling is rich and thick, and making a crumble pie crust easily infuses the dessert with texture and taste. This is a great dessert to follow up a holiday dinner or to make whenever you get a craving for something sweet.

This is the close relative to one of the most popular holiday desserts on my site, Apple Crisp Pie. The main difference here is the topping. In that recipe I use a classic crisp topping that has oats in it. In this one it is all buttery brown sugar goodness.

If you’re making this for the holidays serve it up with some Apple Cider and the house will smell AMAZING.

If you like pies but you’re fresh out of apples, try some of my other classic pie recipes like Blueberry Pie, Southern Pecan Pie or Mixed Berry Pie.

HOW TO MAKE APPLE CRUMB PIE

  • Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) and slice up the apples.
  • Put the apple slices in a large bowl and sprinkle them with lemon juice to keep them from oxidizing and turning brown.
  • In a medium bowl, stir the white sugar, all-purpose flour, cinnamon and nutmeg together. Once it’s well mixed, pour the dry ingredients over the apples and toss everything together until the slices are completely and evenly coated.
  • If you want to go the walnut and raisin route, stir them in now.
  • Pour the apple mixture into the pie crust.
  • Mix 1 cup flour and 1 cup brown sugar together in a separate small bowl. Cut in unsalted butter until the mixture is crumbly. This is your crumb topping. Sprinkle it over the apple filling and cover the top of the pie loosely with aluminum foil.
  • Put the pie in the oven and bake it for 25 minutes.
  • Remove the foil and put the pie back in until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbly.
  • Take the pie out of the oven and let it sit on a wire rack or baking sheet until it is just over room temperature.
  • Serve it up and watch people fight over the last slice.

SERVE WITH

  • Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream: serve up apple crumb pie with a side of homemade ice cream and your guests may end up licking their plates clean.
  • Easy Whipped Cream: whipped cream is much easier to make than you may think and adding a spoonful to the top of your pie is a great way to dress it up.

ORIGINS

While things may be as American as apple pie, apple crumb pie is definitely English. It was invented during WWII, when rationing forced people to alter recipes in order to make do with what they had. Some of the recipe alterations caught on, like apple crumb pie, while others (squirrel tail soup, crow pie and carrot fudge, for example) did not for obvious reasons.

Whole Apple Crumb Pie

SIMILAR DISHES

  • Apple pie: you may notice that there’s a few key differences between apple crumb pie and a traditional apple pie recipe, but the most obvious difference is the crust. Apple pie has a crust that fully covers it, or is in a lattice shape where a crumble pie is more mixed into the filling and is more crumb-like, hence the name. (Who knew?)
  • Apple Brown Betty: this apple crumb pie variant has an awesome name and is more like an apple pudding. The key difference between an Apple Brown Betty and an apple crumb pie is that an Apple Brown Betty is layered like lasagna, with apple slices and pie crust set on top of each other over and over to give it it’s unusual texture.
  • Apple cobbler: this dessert goes by a lot of different names, like apple slump, apple grunt and, the best one, apple pandowdy. Apple cobbler is more free-form than a traditional pie, and the toppings are mixed together with the filling for a “cobbled” look, hence the name.
  • Eve’s pudding: another dessert with an awesome name. Eve’s pudding takes traditional apple pie filling and tops it with sponge cake. The name is probably a tongue-in-cheek play on the Adam and Eve story.
  • Apple crisp: this dessert is very similar to apple crumb pie. It’s made up of chopped apple covered with streusel crust that is made crisp with brown sugar.

SAY CHEESE?

In the United States, parts of New England and the Midwest enjoy eating their apple pie and apple pie-like desserts with cheese. The cheese is either served on top or melted inside the filling. The most commonly used cheese is cheddar, but there’s a ton of different varieties that are mixed in with the pie filling.

HOW LONG IS IT GOOD?

  • Serve: apple crumb pie is okay to leave at room temperature for up to 2 days. If it’s sliced, cover it with plastic wrap to keep it from going stale.
  • Store: pie is good in the fridge for up to 3 days.
  • Freeze: if you let the pie cool completely and store it in an airtight container, it can last up to 4 months in the fridge. After that point, it won’t thaw out very well and you’d do better to just make another one.

Apple Crumb Pie cut in half

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Apple Crumb Pie

Apple Crumb Pie is the perfect combination of apple pie and apple crisp in one holiday dessert your whole family will LOVE with a buttery crisp crumble topping and cinnamon apple slices.
Yield 12 Servings
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Author Sabrina Snyder

Ingredients
 

Pie Crust:

  • 1 1/4 cups flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter , frozen and diced
  • 1/4 cup ice water

Apple Filling:

  • 6 cups thinly sliced apples
  • 1 lemon juiced
  • 3/4 cup  sugar
  • 1/3 cup  flour
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Crumb Topping:

  • 1 cup  flour
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup unsalted butter , frozen and diced
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Instructions

Pie Crust:

  • Add the flour, salt, and butter to a food processor and pulse, adding the water in a thin stream through the chute one tablespoon at a time until the dough begins tiny crumbles (don't let it become a ball).
  • Empty it into a sheet of plastic wrap and press it quickly into a ball (you don't want the heat of your hands to melt the butter) and refrigerate for 4 hours before rolling it out to use.
  • Roll out the pie crust 1/4" thick on a floured surface and add to a deep dish 9" pie plate then refrigerate.

Pie Filling:

  • Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  • In a large bowl mix the apples, lemon juice, sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg.
  • Add the apples to the pie crust.
  • In a medium bowl add the 1 cup flour and 1 cup brown sugar together and stir.

Crumb Topping:

  • Using a fork or a pastry cutter, cut in butter until mixture is crumbly then pour it over the apples.
  • Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes covered very loosely with foil.
  • Remove foil and bake an additional 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is crisp and golgen brown.

Nutrition

Calories: 366kcal | Carbohydrates: 69g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 9g | Saturated Fat: 4g | Cholesterol: 14mg | Sodium: 109mg | Potassium: 133mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 39g | Vitamin A: 191IU | Vitamin C: 4mg | Calcium: 29mg | Iron: 2mg
Keyword: apple crumb pie, apple pie, pie

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. If you enjoyed the recipe and would like to publish it on your own site, please re-write it in your own words, and link back to my site and recipe page. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  1. Hello, does the pre made pie crust need to be cooked/ blind baked beforehand? Also, is the packed brown sugar light or dark? So exited to make this!

    1. No need to cook the pie crust beforehand for this pie and I used light brown sugar for this recipe. I hope you enjoy it!

  2. Hi Sabrina, Carolyn Garcia here, This recipes looks so delicious, I just had to pin it and print it, Thank you! Keep them coming, Carolyn.

  3. This pie sounds super yummy, but 12 servings out of a 9″ pie is IMPOSSIBLE, ….at least in MY world! I’m sure the Nutritional Info would be scary, if it were shown for 8 servings, which would be the usual amount of servings Oh well, we won’t be eating it every day, right? But seriously, it sounds sinfully delicious.

    1. We tend to keep the portions of sweets relatively small in our house, but you’re right- if it’s not everyday, you might as well indulge!