Peanut Butter Caramel Apple Pie
Have you ever seen something so cute that it makes you crack up? Like really just chuckle over its ridiculousness? Or tasted something so good that you close your eyes and tilt your head back and just lose it?
This pie made me laugh.
I wanted to make a classic salted caramel apple, but if you know anything about me, you know I can’t just leave well enough alone. So I decided to add heaping amounts of peanut butter and make a peanut butter caramel so decadent and over the top, you’ll be forgetting the names of the other pies on your Thanksgiving table.
I hate to keep you waiting, so I’ll just get right to it…
Peanut Butter Caramel Apple Pie
Ingredients
Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce
1 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup unsalted butter
4 tablespoons creamy peanut butter (do not use natural!)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
Pie Shell
1 double-crust pie shell (recipe and instruction here)
Apple Pie Filling
3 pounds apples, peeled and cored (roughly 5 granny smith and 5 honeycrisp)
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 lemon, juice only
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 cup creamy peanut butter
Process
Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce
Pour sugar in a heavy bottomed sauce pan over high heat. Let sugar melt until deep caramel brown in color throughout. Turn heat to low/simmer and add in butter and heavy cream, being careful as it will steam and bubble rapidly. Stir until homogenous. If caramel seizes turn heat up to medium or medium-high and stir until combined. Turn off heat and stir in peanut butter, vanilla and salt. Take off heat to let cool to room temperature before using. (Note: The pie recipe calls for about 2/3 of the peanut butter caramel, so you can store the rest in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a month. Pour over ice cream!)
Apple Pie Filling
Peel, core and slice apples into a large bowl, squeezing lemon juice over each one to prevent browning. Pour sugars over apples and using a sturdy spatula, mix until apples are coated. Let sit and macerate for an hour.
In a recently shaped and frozen pie shell, add apples in layers (being sure not to add the juice that was pulled from the fruit at the bottom of the bowl). In between each layer, evenly disperse small dollops of peanut butter and drizzling a few spoonful’s of peanut butter caramel. Apples should be heaping over the pie shell in a mound. Top with another drizzle of caramel sauce.
Preheat oven to 400F.
If you’re doing a lattice, I recommend using a pizza cutter to slice even strips into your rolled out pie shell. If you’re doing a full top crust, be sure to cut a few fully open slits in a radial pattern to let the heat escape.
Once top is added to pie, add to freezer for another 20 minutes. Take out of freezer, brush top with egg wash and top with turbinado sugar.
Set pie on a parchment lined baking sheet and add to bottom rack in preheated oven and set timer for 80 minutes. At 30-45 minutes, check the pie edges for browning. If getting to dark, cover with aluminum foil or pie crust shield and add back to oven. At 80 minutes, take pie out of the oven and wait until the bubbling of juices stops to check. Using an oven mit, gently tilt the pie to see if juices are still thin and fluid. If not, you’re all set! If they are still pretty fluid, you can keep in oven for another 20-45 minutes, checking every 15-20 minutes.
Let cool completely. Cut and serve over an absurd amount of vanilla ice cream, or get yourself a pint of Jeni’s Brown Butter Almond Brittle ice cream and realllllly go all out.
Can be stored at room temperature for up to 3 days.