EASY homemade apple + pumpkin pie (egg + dairy-free) 🥧

Lift off! Apple pie is my favorite kind of pie and today we're going to be making it ourselves at home. Oh gotta take the pies out. Oh shoot. There's nothing quite as rewarding as making your own bakery style pies at home and today you're going to advance from beginner to master in making your own pie crust from scratch which is actually really easy to do and then we're going to use that crust to make an apple pie and a pumpkin pie and everything that we're making is egg free and dairy free so it's completely plant-based. I'm so excited for this. Let's get started. So let's start with first making our own pie crust which can seem really intimidating but it's actually one of the easiest things to do. So to a food processor we're going to add 345 grams of flour, 224 grams of a chilled unsalted vegan butter that we first cut up into little cubes and then we'll add in half of a teaspoon of salt. If you prefer cup and ounce measurements by the way just check out our recipe right up the links are in the description box below. We'll pulse this several times essentially until the butter has been broken up into little pea sized pieces. If you don't have a food processor don't worry about it you can still make this recipe I'll show you how. Just add the flour and salt to a bowl give it a quick mix and then grate in frozen butter mixing it in between. That's essentially it. Next we'll add some ice to water. The name of the game when making pie crusts is making sure that things stay cold. This is so the crust is nice and flaky once it's baked. In fact I've got a little piece of crust here that I've already cut out and baked and I just want to show you how lovely and flaky this is. So for this flakiness we just want to make sure that our butter is chilled and our water is iced. So I'm going to add two tablespoons of ice water to start to our food processor and then pulse this a few times. Then we'll add another two tablespoons of water and pulse it again. We don't want to over blend here we just want it to start coming together. Essentially if we pinch it together between our fingers and it sticks together then that's perfect. Now we'll turn over the dough and any remaining flour bits onto a working surface and just use our hands to incorporate any stray bits into the dough but you don't want to knead it here because we don't want our hands to start melting the butter. Divide the dough into two and then roughly form each one of those into a ball. We'll place one ball onto a large piece of lightly floured parchment paper and then just sprinkle the top of the dough with some flour too. Then place the second piece of parchment paper over top and use a rolling pin to roll this out into a circular shape that's about a quarter centimeter thin or about four centimeters larger than the size of your pie pan. We want to try to roll this as evenly as possible. Try to avoid tapering at the edges. So what can help is if you put pressure down on the center of your rolling pin and work your way outwards that way it's an even thickness throughout. So at this point we want to chill our crust but I want to share a little hack with you first. We want to carefully peel back the top layer of parchment and dust the crust with flour then we're going to replace the parchment paper back on the dough, flip it over and then peel back the other layer of parchment. We're going to dust this with flour as well. So this step essentially just makes sure that the dough doesn't stick to the parchment when we knead it later on. Then we'll repeat the whole process with the second ball of dough. For now let's place both rolled sheets into the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes. So that's it. That's literally all it takes to make pie crust. So while that chills let's move on to making some pie filling starting with apple pie. I am properly obsessed with apple pie. Of all the pies it's got to be my favorite so we're starting with this one first. To make the filling we'll peel about one kilogram of apples. I'm using a mix of red and green but you can use whichever ones you'd like. Some apples are great for their firm texture and tart flavor, some apples cook down too much. If you want to learn more about which apples are best for pies you can see our recipe right up. I'll leave the link in the description box below. We can then start slicing up the apples into about half a centimeter thick pieces and place the slices in a bowl and then sprinkle over top a quarter of a teaspoon of salt. So the salt here just helps to draw excess liquid out of the apples. We're going to now pop this in the microwave at 600 watts for five minutes. Alternatively you could cook it on the stove if you'd like to. Then we'll remove it from the microwave give it a mix and then return it to the microwave for another five minutes. So now we've pre-cooked our apples and in doing so they've shrunken down a little bit. If we had added raw apples to our pie crust it would have actually shrunken down while it's cooking in the oven and in doing so the top might collapse on it and obviously that's not something we want. Pre-cooking the apples also allows some liquid to seep out and we're not going to use this we're going to drain it off and that also helps us avoid a soupy pie. And then to the bowl we'll add in three tablespoons of packed brown sugar, two tablespoons of cornstarch, the juice from half of a lemon, a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, half of a teaspoon of ground ginger, and then we're just going to mix this all together. At this stage we want to let the apples cool down because we don't want to add a hot filling to a cold pie shell. Now for this recipe we can create different kinds of tops. You could do a lattice top or a covered top. I personally think that the lattice tops look beautiful so we're going to start off with that one first but I'll also show you later how to do the cover top just because frankly it's faster and easier. When we're ready to assemble our pie we're going to preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit or 180 Celsius. To one of our rolled out sheets of dough we'll use a pastry wheel to cut the crust into ribbons. The pastry wheel essentially just gives this a decorative pattern but you could use a knife or a pizza cutter here instead. We'll then peel off the parchment sheet from the other rolled out dough circle and flip it onto a glass pie plate. We'll then use our fingers to press the crust into the pie plate. So try to lift and lower when you're fitting this in. You don't want to pull because you don't want to make the pie crust too thin. Then we'll peel the second sheet of parchment off the top of the crust and fill the pie shell with the cooled apple mixture. And here's where we can start to decorate. So we're going to place a few of our ribbons equal distance apart parallel to each other on top of the pie. Then we're going to fold back alternating ribbons placing down a perpendicular ribbon and essentially just repeating this process as we weave these pieces over and under one another. Once we've created the lattice structure we can then trim away any excess dough that's hanging off more than one centimeter over the perimeter of our pie plate. And then we can roll over and seal the edges. If you'd like I'd highly recommend using your finger just to crimp the crust all the way around the pie plate. It just makes it look so beautiful. And then we can brush the top with some vegan whipping cream but you could use some soy or milk here instead. And then we'll sprinkle on a little bit of sugar. This just helps the crust become nice and golden when it's baking. So one thing to keep in mind is that the kind of pan that you're using when you're baking pies will yield different results. Glass, ceramic, metal for example. I personally like to use glass because I can really easily monitor the side of the bottom as it bakes but metal does conduct heat more evenly and it creates a very beautiful bottom crust. So I'm going to try to optimize the best of both worlds by placing my glass pie pan on top of a metal cookie sheet. We'll then cook our pie on the lowest shelf of the oven to ensure that the bottom cooks sufficiently and that it's done at around the same time as the filling in the top. So we'll bake this for about 45 to 55 minutes or until the crust is golden. So now that you know how to make an apple pie you can essentially do this with other kind of fruit pies as well. I've got a blueberry pie here and you can play around with the lattice structure too. So I've got some alternating thin and thick strips just for visual interest. Now let's move on to making the apple pie with the cover top. We're going to fill the crust with the apples making sure to gently press down on the apples to make sure that there aren't any gaps in the filling and then we'll flip the second pastry dough over top of the apples. Then we're going to cut away any excess dough and then fold in the edges. I'm actually just using a bamboo straw here to create a decorative crust around the pie plate and then this part is really important. We want to make sure to cut some slits into the top of the dough to allow some of the steam to escape while everything is baking. Same story here with brushing the top with some cream and sugar before we bake it and that's it. That's how you make a covered pie. Okay so this is our apple pie that's covered but um do learn from my mistakes. So essentially I should have actually cut the slits on the top after I brushed it with the whipping cream because the whipping cream closed the cuts that I'd previously made. So about halfway through baking I saw that it had cracked elsewhere so that the steam could escape. I have now fixed it but it visually doesn't look... it's still actually cute and it's still gonna taste great but there's a little there's a little boo-boo there in the corner. Although nothing beats fresh out of the oven pie I'd highly highly recommend waiting until the pie is completely cooled before you cut into it just so that it firms up and so that it cuts more cleanly but if you can even wait until the next day to cut into it you're gonna get even cleaner slices. Just be sure to serve it with some vegan ice cream or whipped cream if you have it. The combination is heavenly. Goodness this is so good. The apples are soft they've got a little crunch though the crust is flaky with ice cream so good. Next we're gonna make the pie that feels like autumn in dessert form pumpkin pie. So for this recipe we're going to explore how to blind bake our crust which essentially just means we're actually going to bake the crust on its own first before we add any filling. This is something you usually do when you're adding a filling in it that is not baked and you don't want to bake it like a cream pie for example or the other reason you would do it is when you don't want the crust the bottom of it to become soggy which can happen if the filling that you're adding in is too wet which happens to be the case with pumpkin puree. So here is how you blind bake a crust. So we're gonna add our pie crust to our pie pan and trim away any excess dough around the perimeter and then fold it in and again crimp it decoratively if you'd like to. Then we're gonna poke the base several times with a fork this is just so that steam can escape while it's cooking and then we're gonna crumple up some parchment paper this helps the parchment to fit more nicely but also avoids any sharp corners damaging our shell and then we're gonna pour some dry beans into it filling it right to the top but you could use rice here or pie weights instead if you'd like. So using dry beans like this just make sure that the pastry is flat and level on the bottom and prevents it from puffing up. We can now bake this on the lower shelf of a preheated oven at 200 celsius or 400 fahrenheit for 15 minutes. While that bakes we're going to prepare our filling. So to a saucepan we're going to add in 425 grams of pumpkin puree along with one cup of soy cooking cream. Now you could use coconut cream or soy milk if you'd like the texture will be different but the taste is still going to be delicious. Then we're going to add in three quarters of a cup of packed brown sugar, a quarter of a cup of cornstarch, two teaspoons of vanilla extract, half of a tablespoon of ground cinnamon, half of a teaspoon of ground ginger, a quarter of teaspoon of salt, an eighth of a teaspoon of nutmeg and an optional pinch of ground clove. Then we're going to stir this together but we don't want to cook it just yet. By now we can remove our pie crust from the oven. We'll remove the weights from it and then return the pie crust to the oven uncovered this time to bake for another 8-10 minutes or until it's lightly golden. Now we can start cooking our pumpkin filling over medium-high heat at a relatively gentle boil. It doesn't really boil it more like plops and steams but in any case we want to cook it for five minutes stirring throughout. So cooking it a little bit like this gives time for the excess liquid to evaporate but the cornstarch is also working to thicken up the mixture. What this means is that we're not going to be adding a wet filling into our pie crust later and that means we're not going to end up with a soggy crust. When the pie crust is slightly golden we're going to remove it from the oven, drop the oven temperature to 350 Fahrenheit or 180 Celsius and then pour the hot mixture into the hot shell and then spread it out evenly on the top. Then we're going to return it to the oven for one final time baking it for another 8-10 minutes or until the top of the pumpkin becomes slightly set. So here she is in all her glory our pumpkin pie is ready but you do want to wait actually about four hours or overnight before you dig into it just to give it time to firm up. I love serving this one with some whipping cream and if you want you could even cut out little decorative pieces with any leftover crust that you might have. It's velvety smooth, mildly sweet, perfect to enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee. So these are my favorite pies apple pie and pumpkin pie but I'm curious to know what your favorites are maybe just give us some ideas and inspiration for future recipes that we can make so let me know what those are in the comments. If we help to increase your confidence when it comes to baking feel free to give the video a thumbs up because it really helps to support the channel when you do and thanks so much for hanging with me today BiggerBlends signing off we'll see you in the next video. So it happens when you forget your blush and that's helpful because it doesn't kind of puff up get too I re-slit the lines and then I had dreams about making pies literally all my dreams last night were about making pies and then it literally woke me up because someone made the pie wrong and I was like no you can use a similar concept when making the other fruit flat fruit flies doing so we're avoiding a soggy crust oh malfunction