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by Rebecca Perrera
Apple Pie, there is perhaps no symbol as American as a slice of this humble dessert. Some people would say you shouldn't change a classic. You might change your mind after you try the Amadio Ranch Caramel Apple Pie!
Full disclosure, I used to hate pie (I know, I was wrong about a lot of things in my youth.) Turns out, I just hadn’t had a good pie yet! I sat down with Christina Amadio (over a slice of Caramel Apple Pie, of course), to find out just what makes her Caramel Apple Pie so good!
Let’s start with the obvious, what took me so long to find a pie I loved?
Our Caramel Apple pie starts like all of our made-from-scratch fruit pies at Amadio Ranch with simple ingredients: oil, flour, milk, and salt for the crust and fruit, sugar, and spices for the filling. That’s it, folks! It’s actually the lack of all those extra ingredients in the recipe that keep the crust perfectly flaky.
Commercially made pies often have extra ingredients including preservatives, juices, water, corn syrup, and chemical thickeners. These added ingredients lead to soggy or tough crust and a goopy and runny filling which turns you off to pie. (See Christina’s blog post with advice for making perfect pie at home).
As the person behind the Amadio Ranch Pie Kitchen, what influences you?
I grew up watching my mom and grandma make homemade pies in the kitchen in Illinois. My Grandparents had a small apple orchard so every Fall we were busy. They would peel apples and make pies for days. Then anytime they needed a pie over the next year, they’d pull one from the freezer
Our pie kitchen is commercially licensed, but we still use small-batch and hand techniques that ensure quality in replicating my family recipes.
But the infamous Caramel Apple Pie recipe has a modern twist?
Right! The apple pie recipe is my Grandma’s, but we invented the caramel sauce to add to it in 2016. We start with tart Granny Smith apples and reduce the sugar in the classic apple pie recipe. We then add the homemade caramel sauce we invented to the pie which is made from half & half, brown sugar, butter, salt, and vanilla. The result is a Carmel Apple Pie that is not overly sweet and has a perfectly balanced flavor.
Author's note: At this point, Christina handed me a mason jar of caramel sauce. It is delicious! I could eat it by the spoonful. If a mason jar of home-made caramel sauce doesn’t scream "made with some old-fashion love", I don’t know what does.
Where can we find your pies?
We sell our Caramel Apple Pie at our honor-system farm stand at 4701 W. Dobbins Road, Laveen. We are also at several farmers markets and locations across the valley. You can check out the Event’s page for specific locations, dates, and times. We also ship nationwide from our website: https://amadioranch.com/.
Thank you, Christina, for sharing your pies with us! Don’t forget the ice cream!
