The Quick, Microwaved (Well, Almost) Apple Pie

It's that time of year when my refrigerator is full of freshly picked McIntosh apples from a local orchard. All the produce bins and some large plastic storage containers hold the apples that will last until early next year. They get eaten for lunches, made into crisps, and – way too often for my waistline – get made into pies. I felt it was a good season of the year to share the secrets of our frequent fall and winter pie consumption.

I had been the last person in western civilization to acquire a microwave oven, so I had missed out on the early days of manuals and cookbooks that would tell you how to use the oven and what you could actually cook with it. I hit the library and eventually found an old microwave oven cookbook in the used book room. In addition to learning how to use a microwave to bake a potato, raise yeast dough, and melt chocolate, I made the good news/bad news discovery that apple pies can be made in the microwave. The good news: perfect apple pies, with perfectly browned crusts, can be made, from start to finish, in less than an hour if you use a microwave oven to speed up the baking process. The bad news: perfect apple pies, with perfectly browned crusts, can be made, from start to finish, in less than an hour if you use a microwave oven to speed up the baking process...In other words, the time restraints for baking apple pies had been removed. There was now no excuse not to whip one up while making dinner.

The following instructions can be used with any standard two-crust apple pie recipe you may have. It can also be used for most two-crust fruit pie recipes and combinations – cherry, blueberry, pear, cranberry-apple, etc. It will also work with crumble-top recipes, though I would wait to add the crumble topping until the pie goes into the conventional oven. What I love about this way of baking a pie, besides the quick cooking time, is that the crust is always perfect, never dried out or too dark around the edges.

The Quick, Microwaved (Well, Almost) Fruit Pie

Prepare pie the same as for regular oven baking, using a Pyrex or CorningWare pie plate (no metal!). Make sure to slit the crust in several places to prevent crust from exploding. Preheat conventional oven to 425°. Put pie in microwave and heat on high 10 to 12 minutes, or until juices start bubbling through slits in crust. Stick knife through slit to make sure the fruit (such as apple) is tender. (Microwave another minute or two if you think the fruit is not quite soft. Twelve minutes is long enough for most fruits.) Transfer the pie to preheated conventional oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

If preparing an unbaked, frozen pie, microwave 13 to 15 minutes on high before finishing off in a conventional oven.

(If you need a crust or apple pie recipe, let me know and I'll post that as well...)