One of the cooking habits I have developed over the years is to push recipes just a bit.
I love to double spices, add extra ingredients and play with proportions. Normally, that works out really well for me. I love the extra flavor an additional teaspoon of vanilla can provide, and there’s nothing like the taste of a bit of extra cinnamon.
Of course, sometimes that doesn’t work out for me. This week, I pushed the envelope a little too far. For the salted caramel apple pie I tried, I purchased a jar of salted caramel dessert topping, and while the recipe only called for one-half cup of it, I looked at the rest of that jar and thought, “Yeah, but what if I just empty the whole thing on there?”
It was a fantastic idea, until the caramel decided to create a steady, sticky stream inside my pie carrier. I mean, it was still delicious, don’t get me wrong, but cleaning up caramel wasn’t the most fun I’ve had lately.
So, the recipe I tried comes from the blog “Inspired by Charm.” You can find the original at https://inspiredbycharm.com/salted-caramel-honeycrisp-apple-pie/. I did double the cinnamon and nutmeg in my version below, but if you want to push past the listed amount of salted caramel, I’ll leave that up to you.
Salted Caramel Honeycrisp Apple Pie
Ingredients
Pie Ingredients
- single pie crust
- about 5 to 6 large Honeycrisp apples peeled, cored and sliced
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Topping Ingredients
- 12 tablespoons butter cold
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup quick oats
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup pecans chopped
- 1/2 cup or more salted caramel dessert topping
Instructions
- Roll out the pie dough and place into a deep pie plate. Place in the refrigerator while you prepare the rest of your ingredients.
- Preheat the oven to 375, and place a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil on the bottom rack for catching overflow from the pie.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the apples, lemon juice, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
- For the topping, combine the butter and flour using a pastry cutter or two forks until the mixture is crumbly. Stir in the brown sugar, oats and salt.
- Pour the prepared apples into the dough and then crumble the topping evenly over the top of the apples.
- Bake for 60 minutes, and then add 1/2 cup of the chopped pecans and bake an additional five minutes.
- Let the pie cool to room temperature and then chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
- Pour the caramel sauce over top of the pie and then top with the remaining pecans.
This pie seems like it would be overly sweet, but it was actually really well balanced, thanks to the pecans and not a lot of added sugar on the apples.
We really enjoyed it, even though I had to nest my pie into a second pie pan to try to contain the mess. Joey just rolled his eyes and enjoyed his piece of apple pie. At this point, he knows better than to try to stop me.
This piece first appeared in print on Dec. 10, 2020.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.
