A good tart apple like a Granny Smith, plenty of sweetener and plenty of cinnamon makes an awesome apple pie. A really good apple pie with plenty of the proper spices and a good flaky pie crust is hard to beat. I like pie of any kind but a good apple pie is right up there with rhubarb and pecan in my book. One of the best apple pies I have ever had was made by a lady i rented a room from when I was at Hastings College in the summer of 1963. She made it with green apples and lots of sugar and cinnamon. It was gooey and good.

This recipe kind of came about by accident but it turned ut to be a darned good pie. I had an apple tree that was just loaded with the best small but tart apples and there was no way I could use them all so I asked my neighbor if she would like some apples. Well she had more rhubarb than she could use so we traded apples for rhubarb. We decided to get together one afternoon to put up apples and rhubarb for pies, cakes and breads and we were each going to make a pie. She was going to make a variation of a Dutch Apple and I was going to make a rhubarb crumb pie. We just sort of out of the blue decided to put everything together and we came up with an Apple Rhubarb Crumb Pie. So here is the results cut down to a one pie proportion.

APPLE RHUBARB CRUMB PIE

TOPPING

1 cup flour

2/3 cup packed brown sugar or Splenda Brown Sugar

3 tbsp sugar

1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

8 tbsp of butter slightly softened

FILLING

2 pounds crisp baking apples

1 1/2 pounds fresh rhubarb

1 1/2 cups sugar or Splenda

4 tbsp flour

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 Deep dish pie crust

For the topping, in a bowl mix together the flour, brown sugar, sugar, nuts and cinnamon. Work in the butter until the mixture resembles dry oats. The mixture should just hold together and be crumbly.

For the filling, peel, core and quarter the apples. Cut each quarter into four chunks to make about 5 cups. Trim the rhubarb and cut into 1 inch pieces for about 5 cups. In a large bowl toss together the apples, rhubarb, and sugar with the sugar, flour, and cinnamon until all are well coated. Transfer the mixture into the deep dish pie shell and sprinkle with the topping.

Bake at 375 F until the topping is golden and the fruity is bubbly or approximately 1 to 1 1/4 hours.

I like the topping made with pecans best but in the interest of economy I have used walnuts more of late. Serve this while it is still warm with a big dig of vanilla ice cream for a delicious treat.

Now that we have moved to our retirement home, we don't have the apple tree anymore but the original owners had a big rhubarb patch. I have taken out a big old ugly, sticky fir hedge and planted raspberries and blueberries and I put in a three tier fifty plant strawberry bed so watch for the latest concoction to come up this summer when all things are bearing and I feel like experimenting again. How about a three berry rhubarb crumble pie? Sounds good to me.

Learn more about this author, Bill Whitney.
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