This is my favourite recipe for the best maple apple pie. Even better than a traditional apple pie, this maple-flavoured apple pie recipe is made with maple-roasted apples, which are tossed with maple sugar before pouring into the pie crust and baking. This incredible apple pie is made with roasted apple slices, which allows you to pack more apples into your apple pies!
The technique behind this recipe is what makes it extra special. Roasting the slices of apples before filling the apple pie allows you to cram over 4 pounds (2 kilos) of apples into one single 9-inch apple pie! This is a technique I also use for rhubarb pie and rhubarb crumble, allowing me to load up my fruit desserts with lots of fruit.
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What You Need to Make Maple-Flavoured Apple Pie
- pie crust—I bake most of my pies with all-butter pie crust made in the food processor. You can also make pie dough by hand or use a stand mixer to make flaky crust
- apples—bake pies with the freshest apples you can get. Use apples that can withstand heat without breaking down, such as Cortland (what I generally use), Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, Gala, or even Golden Delicious. Don't use Macintosh apples which will turn the filling to sauce
- maple syrup—use pure maple syrup, not pancake syrup (which is flavoured corn syrup)
- maple sugar—you may need additional maple sugar to sweeten the pie filling. It depends on the apples you choose and whether they are very acidic and tart-tasting
- egg—the egg is diluted in a little water for the egg wash that you brush on the top crust before baking. This allows the turbinado or cinnamon sugar garnish to adhere to the top of the pie. You can replace it with whipping cream
- flour—we are using just a little flour as the thickener for the filling because the pre-roasted apples don't need a strong thickener
- cinnamon sugar—garnish the top crust with turbinado sugar or cinnamon sugar
Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.
Variations And Substitutions
- Spices: Sometimes, I add a little cinnamon to the filling or a teaspoon of pumpkin pie or apple pie spice mix
- Vanilla: Sometimes, I add a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste to the filling, but you don't have to. You can also add vanilla extract instead.
How To Make Apple Pie With Roasted Apples
Start by roasting the apples because they will need to cool down completely before you make your pie!
Step 1—Combine sliced apple with maple syrup on two half-sheet pans (image 1) and roast until softened (image 2). Let cool completely, then transfer the roasted apples to a bowl and mix with flour and extra maple sugar (if using) (image 3).
Tip: Make your pie dough before roasting your apples. Then while you work on the apples, your pie dough has time to chill. By the time the apples are done baking, you will be able to roll out the dough and move on to the next steps!
Step 2—Roll out your two disks of pie crust to at least 14 inches wide on a lightly floured surface (image 4). If using a pie crust cutter like my favourite NordicWare pie tool, lay one rolled out crust over top (image 5) and use a rolling pin to roll over the crust on the cutter (image 6) to punch out the detailed pattern (image 7).
If making pie crust from scratch scares you, be sure to check out my pie crust masterclass, which includes video tutorials for making pie crust in the stand mixer, food processor, and by hand!
Step 3—Transfer the cooled apple pie filling to a pie plate lined with the bottom crust (image 8). Trim the excess of dough (image 9) before laying the top crust over the filling (image 10).
Step 4—Tuck the edges of the top crust under the bottom crust (image 11) and crimp the edge all around (image 13) before brushing the surface with egg wash and sprinkling the top with turbinado or cinnamon sugar (image 13).
Step 5—Set the pie on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan (image 14) and bake until golden brown (image 15).
Pie baking tip: Bake the pie on the bottom rack of the oven and start the pie at a high temperature to set the crust before dropping the oven temperature to evenly bake the pie from edge to edge.
Top Apple Pie Tips
As much as I love ALL pie, I hate when I bake a double-crust apple pie and when I pull it from the oven, I find that the filling has shrunk down a good inch or two from the puffed top crust, creating a big gap between the crust and the filling. How do we bake an apple pie without that big gap?
The answer is to soften the apples first. There are a few ways to do so to yield soft and pliable fruit that you can pack more tightly into a double-crust pie:
- macerate the apples in sugar (and a little lemon juice to prevent browning), like for this peach mango pie or this blueberry pie. You can then cook down the juices before filling the pie.
- roast the apples, which is a trick I also used for rhubarb lattice pie, rhubarb crisp, and even this blueberry rhubarb crisp
- poach the apples (like for this wine-poached pear pie)
For this pie, I started with 12 cups of sliced apples (that's 4 pounds of whole apples!). Yes, you read that right: TWELVE cups of apple slices. I roasted the slices for about 45 minutes. They didn't appear to have shrunk that much, but when I compared the volume of apple after baking, I realized I was left with a lot less, like 4-to-5-ish cups. That seemed just crazy to me but I had "so little" roasted apple that when I later filled the pie plate with the apples, it filled the crust snuggly without having to make a big mound in the centre.
Imagine having to pile 12 cups of apples in a pie for a second. That'd basically be impossible had I not roasted the apples first. Perhaps the only plausible way to get all those raw apple slices into a pie would be to make a pie in a deep dish springform pan, arranging them ever so neatly to avoid any wasted space and gaps. Maybe that would work. Maybe.
APPLE PIE TIP: Roast apple slices before making pie to soften the fruit so that the filling doesn't shrink so dramatically as it bakes! You'll also be able to fill the pie with more apples this way!
Pre-cooking the apples for pie makes the perfect apple pie. The pie cuts beautifully, and there is hardly a gap between the top crust and the apple filling. The filling has an intense apple flavour that isn't masked by a thickener because there's hardly a need for a thickener here. Fine, it takes an extra hour (when you count the time to cool the apples) to prep the apples, but I think it's absolutely worth it.
Easy Decorative Pie Crust
This pie top cutter from Nordic Ware is one of my favourite pie tools! It's super handy for making a decorative top crust quickly. It's basically a giant cookie cutter designed to make a decorative pie crust. Because of its intricacy and its size, it's a little tricky to use because you have to be sure to press evenly and hard enough to cut through the dough. Make sure your rolled-out sheet of dough is cold to make cutting easier. Press firmly and evenly all over. Use a rolling pin, rolled back and forth over the plastic cutter to put even pressure all over so you cut through the dough.
Tip: Inevitably, when you make a pie, you will be left with a pile of pie dough scraps. Gather them up and press them together to shape them into a disk and use them to make pie crust cookies!
If you would prefer a more classic look, read about how to make a lattice pie crust so you can use this technique on your maple apple pie.
Other Apple Baking Recipes
While there's nothing quite like this maple syrup pie or an apple butter pie, this maple apple pie is an excellent pie to bake with fall fruit. Short on time? Try this quick and easy recipe for apple crisp or this easy apple galette instead! And for the more advanced bakers, try the classic apple tarte tatin.
If you tried this recipe for the best maple apple pie (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!
📖 Recipe
Maple Apple Pie
Ingredients
Apple filling
- 1.8 kg Cortland apple(s)
- 234 grams pure maple syrup
- 100 grams maple sugar more or less depending on how sweet your apples are
- 30 mL bleached all-purpose flour
All-butter double pie crust
- 312 grams bleached all-purpose flour
- 173 grams unsalted butter cold, cut into small chunks
- 5 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt
- 105 mL cold water
Egg wash
- 1 large egg(s) don't add it to the dough! Brush it on the pastry before baking
Instructions
For the filling
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C). Lline two half sheet pans with parchment and set aside.
- Peel and core the apples. Cut them into quarters, then cut each quarter into three.
- Place the apple slices in a big bowl with the maple syrup and toss them to evenly coat them in syrup.
- Divide the slices between the two parchment-lined half sheet pans, arranging them in a single layer. Roast the apples for about 45 minutes, rotating the pans every so often.
- Let the apples cool then toss them with the flour and the maple sugar.
For the crust
- In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour and salt.
- Drop in the cold butter chunks and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse almond meal. Add the cold water and pulse until the mixture forms a dough.
- Divide the dough into two, pat into disks and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for 45 minutes.
- Roll out one disk on a floured surface into a 13" disk. Transfer to a metal pie dish and trim the edges to ½". I like this dark metal pie plate available on Amazon.
- Pour filling into the pie and smooth it out.
- Roll the second disk of dough and use the Nordic Ware pie crust cutter to stamp out a pattern from the top crust, then top the pie with the crust. Trim the edge to 1" then fold the excess under. Crimp the edge of the pie.
- Whisk the egg in a small bowl and brush it over the entire surface of the pie crust. Freeze the pie for 45 minutes, then bake the pie on a baking sheet on the bottom rack for 30 minutes at 400ºF, then 50 minutes at 350ºF.
- Let cool slightly before serving.
Notes
- This recipe calls for Diamond Crystal fine Kosher salt. If using regular table salt, add half the amount or the recipe may be too salty!
- You can buy maple sugar in many markets and grocery stores in the New England area and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. You can also order it online from Amazon.
Kaylene Bush says
Could you use a different type of apple, like Fuji, Honeycrisp or Gala for this pie? Thanks!
Janice says
Hi! Yes, you can! As long as it's an apple that doesn't break down too much when it bakes, you should be fine! Like, for example, a macintosh apple wouldn't work well. I think Honeycrisps and Galas definitely would work well, even better than Cortlands possibly! They might be sweeter though. Something to keep in mind 😉