Two favorites combined

Fall is here and apples are everywhere. My latest favorite is the Honeycrisp.

I love apple pie and I love apple crisp. Why not combine the two? I am going to be honest with you here. I've stopped using my pie pan after I discovered how nicely the crostada way works. Although you may want a deeper filling but I was getting annoyed over how each time I took out a slice parts of the crust was on the bottom. But every slice I do crostada style, no fuss, no muss!

Here's what you need and how you do it:

Apple Crisp Crostada

1 pie crust (either your favorite recipe or a pre-prepared one)
5 apples, peeled, cored and chopped in chunks
juice of one lemon
2 Tbsp instant tapioca
1 Tbsp cinnamon
2 dashes nutmeg
1/4 cup sugar (maybe even less since these apples are so sweet)
dash salt
Topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup butter, ice cold, cut into chunks
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a small bowl, prepare the topping. Using a pastry blender, cut the butter chunks into the brown sugar and flour. Keep cutting the butter until the pieces are as small as the walnuts you chopped. Add walnuts and lightly toss into the butter and sugar mixture. Set aside.

In a large bowl, peel and chop apples and add lemon juice, tapioca (these apples were juicy and needed some thickener), cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and salt. Mix well.

On parchment paper, roll out pie crust as large as it can go without getting 'see thru' thin. Take parchment paper and put on a cookie sheet (I used my pizza peel and baked this on my pizza stone). Sprinkle a handful of the topping in the center of the pie crust. Pile all the apples in the center, leaving about 1 -1/2 inch around the edge. This will be a pretty big mound. Use your fingers and hands to lightly press if you need to keep the apples from 'rolling down'. Sprinkle your topping over the mound and also the sides of the mound (this will be tricky). I started to curl up the pie crust edges up while I did the topping to help keep it ON. Take all the edges and fold them up and press gently into the apples.

Bake for one hour or until the juices are bubbly and is 'pooling' level to the crust edge. Cool on parchment until ready to eat.

Nice and crunchy nutty topping on those apples.

I can't get over how level this is when the mound was HUGE. I wish now I had taken a picture of the mound and put them side by side. Although the honeycrisp apples are still firm I guess the smaller chunks did cook down more. I am also glad that the whole lemon gave a some tartness to cut the sweetness of the apple.

This was REALLY good. No ice cream or whipped topping was used in the eating of this pie. It didn't need it. When you are ready to make your apple pies this season....don't use both crusts at once. Make a crostada, it's easier and you'll get more pie this way!

Enjoy!