Apple pie is one of the great American desserts, but making an apple pie from scratch is a long and difficult process. (As anyone who’s ever tried to make a pie crust knows, you’ll want to pull your hair out when the butter won’t cut into the flour and form a dough.) It doesn’t have to be that difficult!
What if you could pull together a recipe with just five ingredients and minimal preparation—and still have it be one of the best things you’ve eaten? Keep reading to find out how to make a great apple pie without the stress!
Tart Apples Make For A Sweet, Delicious Pie
Ingredients
5 Granny Smith apples
2 cans of cinnamon rolls
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of cornstarch
If you’ve never made a fruit pie before, you might be wondering why you’d use such a tart apple to make a great dessert. The reality is that when it comes to desserts, you don’t want to create something that’s overly sweet. When something’s too sweet, you might enjoy the first bite of it, but the subsequent bites aren’t so great once you’ve been hit with a truckload of sugar.
That’s why you use tart apples like Granny Smith. Slice them up and coax their flavors out by adding the sugar, cinnamon, and cornstarch to the cut apples and mixing them together.
Learn how cinnamon rolls create a great substitute for a pie crust!
Save Time By Choosing Pre-Made
Have you ever watched Guy’s Grocery Games on the Food Network? If you have, you might have seen one game called “Five Ingredients or Less”, where chefs have to cook their dish while using no more than five things they buy from the market.
To make it work, the chefs often get at least one pre-made item that contains the flavors they want. That’s what you’re doing here with the cinnamon rolls. A great apple pie includes a good cinnamon flavor throughout each bite, and cinnamon rolls cover that requirement.
While the apple flavors are getting to know each other and the oven is preheating to 350 degrees, put the cinnamon rolls to use by slicing each roll in half and putting the bottom layer in a pie dish that you’ve sprayed with non-stick oil. Once they’re in place, add in the apple slices and close off the holes with the rest of the cinnamon rolls to make your top crust. You’ve almost got this pie ready to go.
Baking, Finishing And Enjoying
Once you’ve got a hot oven and a carefully crafted pie, it’s time to cover it with foil and bake it for 35 minutes, giving you a perfect opportunity to either prepare a glaze to finish it off or to take a well-deserved break.
After 35 minutes pass, bake uncovered for the final 10 minutes to finish off the crust. Give the pie time to cool when it gets out of the oven. Whether you choose to add a glaze (honey, icing, or cinnamon sugar), or you choose to enjoy it as is, you’ve got a great creation that will taste like you spent all day in the kitchen.
Nobody else has to know that this all came together in less than two hours!
