Apple Flower

Pastry dough

1 ½ cups flour

1/2 t salt

2 T  sugar

6 T unsalted butter cut into ½-inch dice

2 T Crisco

3 – 4 T ice water

Make pastry dough. Place flour, salt and sugar in food processor bowl.  Pulse to mix.  Place butter and Crisco around bowl and pulse until mixture resembles coarse corn meal.  Sprinkle 3 T ice water around bowl.  Pulse briefly.  If mixture has not begun to come together add 1 more T ice water. Mix again until dough will stick together.  Stop processor. Take out mixture and pat into a round disk on top of a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap around disk and refrigerate for at least ½ hour.

Roll out to a 12-inch round.  Place in a 9-inch pie tin.  Crimp edge.  Place aluminum foil and pie weights in shell and prebake 12 minutes at 400 degrees.    Take shell out of oven and remove pie weights and aluminum foil.  Prick shell with a fork to prevent the bottom from rising and return to oven.  Bake until dry, about 5 minutes.  Cool.

Apple filling

5 large yellow delicious apples

juice of ½ lemon, divided

1 cup sugar, divided

4 T apricot preserves

2 T butter cut into ½-inch cubes

Peel and core apples with a round corer.  Slice apples in half vertically. Slice apple halves thinly into half moon shapes.  Sprinkle apples with lemon juice and sugar as you work.  Chop end pieces and one whole apple into a dice.  Mix dice with 1 t lemon juice, 1 T sugar and 4 T apricot preserves.  Spread this mixture in bottom of pie shell, but leave excess juice behind.

Arrange apple slices on top of mixture starting at the outside edge, overlapping them.  For the center, peel and roll up a 10-inch long and 1 1/2 –inch wide strip of apple cut from around the circumference of an apple.  Dot top with butter and sprinkle with 1 T sugar.

Bake in the center of oven at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.  Then lower heat to 350 degrees and bake for 45 minutes or until edges of apples are browned and juices are bubbling up.