No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.

Easy to do apple pie recipes to remind us that apples need very little help to make a memorable apple pie. Apples are simply layered in a pie pan, with each layer sprinkled with cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar. Then they are topped with dabs of butter and crust. And less then an hour, the classic apple pie bakes to perfection. For the best apple pie, choose apple varieties that will not turn into mush as they bake. Combining varieties - such as Granny Smiths with Braeburns, or Northern Spies with Newtowns.

Apple Pie definitions and much more.

In cooking an apple pie or a fruit pie or tarts in which the principal filling ingredient is cooking apples. Pastry crust is generally used on top-and-bottom, making a double-crust pie, the upper crust of which may be a pastry lattice woven of strips; exceptions are deep-dish apple pie with a top crust only.

A traditional way to serve apple pie, particularly in Yorkshire, is with cheese. This adds a deep flavor. This is commonly a hard crumbly cheese such as Cheshire when served separately or Cheddar when cooked just under the crust as a layer within the apple pie.

In Commonwealth countries, apple pie is a dessert of enduring popularity, eaten hot or cold, on its own or with ice cream, double cream, or custard.

Apple Pie-Dutch style

Dutch apple pie [apple tart or appelgebak recipes go back a long way. Dutch apple pie recipes typically also call for flavorings such as cinnamon and lemon juice to be added, and Dutch apple pies are usually decorated in a lattice style. Dutch apple pies contain the regular ingredients plus others including raisins, nuts and icing.

Apple Cobbler

A baked, deep-dish apple or fruit dessert topped with a thick biscuit crust sprinkled with sugar and nut meg.

Apple Crisp

A dessert of apples or fruit baked with a sweet crumbly topping: Something crisp or easily crumbled over the top of the apples.

Mock Apple

Pie A mock apple pie made from crackers was apparently invented by pioneers on the move during the nineteenth century who were bereft of apples. In the 1930s, and for many years afterwards, Ritz Crackers promoted a recipe for mock apple pie using its product, along with sugar and various spices.

April Fool!," my young daughter cried with great glee. She had just baked a pie for her father, and she couldn't wait until he tasted it. It looked like apple pie. It tasted like apple pie, but there wasn't an apple in it. "It's made with Ritz crackers!," she announced triumphantly. He was appropriately impressed and declared she'd won the traditional tease.

It wasn't until some years later that I discovered that that recipe -- or one very much like it -- was invented around 1852 by a group of pioneer women for their children who missed the apple pie they'd had "back east." In Helen Evans Brown's West Coast Cookbook, she quotes Mrs. B. C. Whiting's How We Cook In Los Angeles (1894), "The deception was most complete and readily accepted. Apples at this early date were a dollar a pound, and we young people all craved a piece of Mother's apple pie to appease our homesick feelings." The recipe was referred to as "California Pioneer Apple Pie, 1852", and the crackers used at that time were "soda crackers" which were mixed with brown sugar, water and citrus acid and cinnamon.