With a flaky crust, tender apples and warm spices, this delicious handheld pie in slab form will instantly win you over! You get more crust per serving than you would with a normal pie, it is easy to eat with your hands which immediately raises its crave-able factor since I can hold it in one hand while juggling one of the kids with the other. Finally it is topped with all the flavors in the pie because we use all the leftover spiced liquids from the apples in the glaze. My husband and I have this joke when we try to argue our point and it goes something like this conversation between Toby and Michael on the Office. In the spirit of Toby, this pie is flaky and tender and warm and covered in a runny delicious glaze that you can eat with your hands…is that not enough? should I keep going?
This blog may only be five weeks old, but my love for food blogs has been alive and well for probably a decade now. I began by bookmarking sites in my browser only to have to find alternatives to that when I found out I had thousands of them! Then I thought, I’ll be smart, so I emailed them to myself in Gmail. Finally, I just started making them into word documents and saving them to a recipe folder I could reference. All of this in the Pre-Pinterest days!
Why the trip down memory lane? Because the blog this recipe comes from is one of the first I ever really fell in love with. The photos, the recipes, the sheer unabashed love of using butter (I mean c’mon this recipe uses 3 sticks)! My love for Smitten Kitchen has been riding a high for a very, very long time. I sat down with my recipes, sorted all the ones from her blog and decided I needed to make one. Over the years I have made so many, it became difficult to choose. Part of me wanted to make the Tomato Scallion Shortcakes that are proudly featured on the cover of her cookbook, but that seemed like a bandwagon fan sort of thing to do. I wanted to show the b-side to my mixtape of Smitten Kitchen love. This Apple Slab Pie is it! It is a very recent recipe, only a couple of years old, but it is one of our favorites! It also does remarkably well in crowd settings, which I appreciated since I sent this to my husband’s office iced, and with a metal spatula. The tiny sliver that came back home tells me it was a hit! I find that we always end up with roughly 1 or 2 servings left and I think it is because his office is full of people too nice to be the person who takes the last piece. I have no such shame!
To Make the Pie Crust:
Using a food processor, process the flour, sugar and salt for a couple of seconds. Add in the butter cubes and pour water into the top feeder of the food processor slowly while pulsing the mixture until it resembles pea sized pieces.
Take the dough out of the processor and knead together a couple of times just to form a rough ball.
Cut into two pieces, flatten each like a disc and wrap tightly with saran wrap. Put in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
Heat oven oven to 375 degrees. Line bottom of 10×15 jellyroll pan with parchment paper. You can alternately use a regular rectangular pan, a jelly roll pan just makes for a prettier presentation.
To make the filling:
Toss the cut apples with the lemon juice. Add the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and salt. 
Mix well.
To Make the pie:
On a lightly floured smooth surface, roll one of your dough halves into a rectangle about an inch bigger than your pan on all sides. Put the crust into the pan and use that extra inch surround to make the crust into a wall going up the sides of the pan.
Roll out the second disk of dough into another rectangle. Scoop the apples out, leaving behind the juices. Put apples onto crust.
Cover the apples with the second crust and crimp the two crusts together to form a tight seal.
Cut 6-8 small 1 inch vents on the pie to prevent the crust from having steam trapped inside. Brush with the heavy cream. Top with coarse sanding sugar. Bake for 40-45 minutes until the crust is golden brown and the insides of the slits show it bubbling. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
In the meantime, using the bowl that had the apples, add in the powdered sugar and mix. Pour the glaze in any pattern you’d like over the cooled pie.
Enjoy! What you don’t finish today is good for a couple of days at room temperature.
We reheated in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes and it was fantastic!
Ingredients
- 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoons sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 3 sticks unsalted butter , very cold, diced into cubes
- 3/4 cup very cold water
- 10 apples , peeled, cored and cubed into ¾ inch cubes (I used half Grannysmith, half Fuji)
- juice of one lemon
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/8 teaspoon table salt
- 1/4 cup heavy cream , for brushing
- coarse sanding sugar
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- the juice left over from the filling
Instructions
- To Make the Pie Crust:
- Using a food processor, process the flour, sugar and salt for a couple of seconds.
- Add in the butter cubes and pour water into the top feeder of the food processor slowly while pulsing the mixture until it resembles pea sized pieces.
- Take the dough out of the processor and knead together a couple of times just to form a rough ball.
- Cut into two pieces, flatten each like a disc and wrap tightly with saran wrap.
- Put in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
- Heat oven oven to 375 degrees.
- Line bottom of 10x15x1-inch jellyroll pan with parchment paper. You can alternately use a regular rectangular pan, a jelly roll pan just makes for a prettier presentation.
- To make the filling:
- Toss the cut apples with the lemon juice
- Add the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and salt.
- Mix well.
- To Make the pie:
- On a lightly floured smooth surface, roll one of your dough halves into a rectangle about an inch bigger than your pan on all sides.
- Put the crust into the pan and use that extra inch surround to make the crust into a wall going up the sides of the pan.
- Roll out the second disk of dough into another rectangle
- Scoop the apples out, leaving behind the juices.
- Put apples onto crust.
- Cover the apples with the second crust and crimp the two crusts together to form a tight seal.
- Cut 6-8 small 1 inch vents on the pie to prevent the crust from having steam trapped inside.
- Brush with the heavy cream.
- Top with coarse sanding sugar.
- Bake for 40-45 minutes until the crust is golden brown and the insides of the slits show it bubbling.
- Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
- In the meantime, using the bowl that had the apples, add in the powdered sugar and mix. Pour the glaze in any pattern you'd like over the cooled pie.
- Enjoy! What you don't finish today is good for a couple of days at room temperature.
- We reheated in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes and it was fantastic!
Notes
Nutrition
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Do you have a weight for the flour? I hate to make a recipe without knowing the weights as everyone seems to have a different method of measuring.
I have not made this yet because I am not sure of the apple quantity. You say 10 apples but what size apples or how many cups would these 10 apples calculate to. Thank You
small to medium apples are about a cup each apple. Hope that helps!
I love baking desserts but one thing always throws me when reading recipes. What amount is a stick of butter? I buy butter in 1 pound blocks.
A stick of butter is equivalent to 1/2 cup. I bet you get a better price buying it in 1 pound blocks.
I made this yesterday and followed the directions to a T except I used my own pie crust recipe. It was very easy and I liked the glaze on top. That said, I felt that the spices could have been bumped up a bit on the filling. I used a combo of apples (Jazz, Pink Lady and Granny Smith) and they all cooked beautifully. I will be making this again but I’ll add more spices.
YES! This apple slab pie is what I have been looking for, great way to feed a crowd, sharing this one!
Awesome! Thanks!
This looks amazing for larger groups! I’m always timid to make apple pie when it only serves so many. YUM!
Yes! That is why I sent it to my hubby’s office. I sent a spatula so they could section off the size they wanted too. It was a hit!
Yum! This looks so good. I love apple anything so I will be trying this one. It looks amazingly good!
Awesome! I hope you love it!
OMG that looks so good. I bet it would be great with a scoop of vanila ice cream.
Thanks!
That pie looks delicious! And I would eat that last piece too!
Thank you! I am right with you on that, especially with pie crust involved!
Love making apple pie. Yours looks so good.
Thanks!
I love the idea of a slab pie! This allows for more servings and helps people who can’t make a pretty pie. I love the idea myself!
Thanks! I never thought of it being easier to make it look pretty. That is so true! I do have to say I made it because it meant more crust!
I pinned this! This looks so amazing and perfect I want with some vanilla ice cream!
Thank you so much for the pin! I hope you love it!
This looks so delicious! A slab pie feels less scary to make than one requiring the perfect crust in a traditional pie pan too. Seems great for a crowd too.
Thank you!
My husband is a pie lover and believes it is all about the crust. This looks like something my boys would have an easier time making compared to a straight pie.
Yes! Crust is king!
My mother-in-law makes a family recipe similar to this. They call it Apple Sheet Cake. My favorite apple dish is apple crumble in a cast iron skillet. We get a lot of apples as my husbands family has an orchard.
My beyond favorite apple dessert is an apple crisp. All through high school we used to go to Red Robin and they had an apple crisp (which, lets be honest was probably nothing to write home about) that we got EVERY time we went. To this day if I can have one apple dessert, it is an apple crisp. Half the apples, twice the crisp! 😉 It is just more of a fall/winter dish. But definitely one of my favorites to make. PS I love that you make it in a cast iron skillet. I make anything and everything in cast iron that I can!
Add me to the substitute the apple for cherry as I don’t eat apple pie, but you mean there were days before Pinterest? LOL 🙂
I know, it is so crazy to think of it now. I have emails of links after links! I could never go back to those days now, I’m too spoiled with how easy it is to pin things.
This looks so delicious and honestly much easier to make than a traditional pie. I’ll have to try it.
Thanks! Hope you like it!
This looks super tasty. I love all kinds of apple pie.
Yup, hard to go wrong with pie!
This looks really good. My husband would have me make this all the time if he saw this recipe. Thanks for sharing it.
I have only ever had this happen once, but from experience, they freeze quite well! Hope you love it!
Goodness this looks outstanding and I love the slab premise. It has been far too long since I have enjoyed a delicious apple pie!
Thanks! I like any recipe where I get extra pie crust!
Oh man, all that butter – I bet this apple pie is sooooo good!
Okay, I HAVE to make this. My mouth is watering just looking at the pictures! My husband is an apple pie guy so I know he would love it too.
Awesome! I can’t wait to hear how you like it!
I don’t normally like apples but this looks and sounds so good! I love the glaze you added to it!
Thanks! I saw all that delicious liquid left in the bowl and thought, “why the heck not?!”
This Apple Slab Pie looks incredible!!! It is one of my favorite desserts!
Thank you! I love this only a tiny bit more than the sour cherry version of it, but I couldn’t find any sour cherries!
Oh my. This looks SO. GOOD. Pinning this for apple season. Can’t wait to try it!
Thank you for the pin!! I hope you love it!
I have been eating cannoli for breakfast every morning here in Italy (and loving it–no complaints here) but when I saw this my little Americano heart went pitter pat. Yum.
Haha, I think a cannoli in the morning sounds like a delightful plan! But if you eat this you get icing along with the crispy crust!
It’s the glaze that puts this over the top! I love your pictures as well, they make this look so delicious!
Aww, how sweet! Thank you so much! I’m a sucker for the glaze too!
That is so great! I’ve never seen apple pie done like this before. Absolutely fantastic!
Thanks!
This looks so amazing. I have always loved warm apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
Yum! Me too!
looking at these pictures, I swear I can almost smell it – and apple pie makes a seriously delicious breakfast
You’re so right. It was delicious with my coffee!
That sounds delicious. I can’t wait to make this.
I have NO shame. I would totally eat the last piece, haha, because it is apple pie, MY FAVORITE!!
You and I could be fast friends! 😉