My first time making an apple pie (a semi-successful endeavor).

Although I usually prefer to cook and eat savoury food, on this particular morning, with a sudden burst of inspiration from a YouTube video, I decided to give my shot at making an apple pie. This is the recipe I referred to for the ingredients.

Not only was it my first time making an apple pie, it was also my first time making dough from scratch, which I found out very soon uses a lot more butter than I’d expected; at some point, it felt like there was more butter than flour in the food processor.

All hope was nearly lost in the first 10 minutes of cooking, as I seemingly poured far more cold water into my dough than what was prescribed in the video. Miraculously, the first layer of dough held its shape as I rolled it out and laid it across the glass dish (perhaps sparing me early so the recipe could punish me later, as you’ll see).

I put the other half of the dough (which would form the lattice) in the fridge as I painstakingly peeled, cored, and thinly sliced eight Granny Smith apples with some (very unhelpful) assistance from my brother.

Tasking my brother to layer the apples on top of the dough, I began to prepare a sugar-butter mixture that was meant to be poured over the apples and lattice top of the pie; little did I know, this mixture would be my dish’s undoing.

What happens when you boil sugar and butter in a pot and let it cool? It becomes toffee. What was meant to be a smooth, pourable mixture turned into a rock-like substance as I poured it over my pie. Instead of seeping through the cracks of the lattice and coating the apples, it lay on top of the dough in a pile of steaming goop.

Knowing there was no fixing it at this stage, I decided to just go ahead and bake it, adjusting the oven to focus heat from the bottom rods in hopes of preventing the caramel from burning.

After around an hour of cooking, the pie came out looking perfect, minus the toffee on top.

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The crust was perfect (probably because it’s impossible to add so much butter and still mess up), and the apples finished with a perfect balance of sweetness and tartness. Despite the unintended outcome with the caramel, the overall taste of the dish was as good as any apple pie I’ve ever had.

Next time, I’ll add some cinnamon powder, buy a tub of vanilla ice cream to accompany it, and hopefully not overboil the sugar-butter mixture.

(Also, forgive the terrible camera quality of the photos. I promise, it is an apple pie, not a pizza.)