If you're gonna go, go all out!

Today of all days I am thinking about how thankful I am that I have a house, a beautiful kitchen thanks to my wonderful DH, and money to spend on food so that I can create an over-the-top meal for my family.  The prompt for this was my adventure over the last few days looking for Apple Brandy.  It seems simple, but no, for some reason no store around me carries it...which is why I decided to call around to various liquor stores to find this one elusive ingredient that I need for the gravy...and I did find it finally...which is why after work today I drove downtown to Berbiglia's to get their one and only bottle of Applejack Brandy that they were sooo nice to put on hold for me!

I know it seems semi-insane to go to such lengths to find one ingredient when I'm sure a simple Brandy would have been just as good...but I wanted everything to be perfect, and seems how I did find it, I'm gonna use it more than once!

Now that everything is as it should be, it's time to make some apple pie.  And not just any apple pie.  I'm making a salted caramel apple pie...everything except the crust is from scratch...cause doing a crust on my own would be cause for a super stressful evening with my DH.

This is definitely a gather-then-go situation...

Combine the sugar and water and cook over low heat till dissolved

Add the butter and bring to a slow boil, continue cooking until a golden brown or copper color. This takes FOREVER, and I mean I stood at the stove for an hour and a half waiting on this stuff...

Remove from heat and add heavy cream (watch the steam)

Whisk the mixture over low heat and sprinkle in the sea salt (I used my pink Spice Agent salt because I could).  After this actually turned out, because at one point my caramel looked like this...

And I could have easily panicked! Instead I just added the cream and said to heck with the color...then put on nice clothes and my DH took me out to dinner, and to the store so I could pick up a few things I missed on my original shopping trip...

One hour + later...

Now on to the filling, again gather then go!

Having a mandolin makes the slicing really easy, and is something my DH is great at doing!!!

Dredge all of the apple slices in the lemon juice to prevent browning and set aside.

Rolling the lemon before slicing helps get all the juice out!

In another bowl combine the sugar, flour, spices and bitters.

Sprinkle this over the apple slices and gently toss with your hands to coat. Make sure you take any jewelry off...cause this stuff sticks to everything! But on the plus side your hands smell great afterword!

Time to assemble the pie. Like an apple pie lasagna!

1/3 apples, and take the time to arrange them to reduce gaps. 1/3 caramel sauce...

repeat two more times reserving a bit of the caramel for the top of the pie.

Put the top crust on the pie...oh sooo much easier said than done!!!  I guess my crust was too thawed...and came apart and looks horrible...whatever, I'm sure it will taste awesome and that's what counts right?  I will get it right one of these days!!!

Brush the crust with the beaten egg, then lightly sprinkle with raw sugar and sea salt (again I used the pink salt)

Bake for 20 minutes at 375-400 then reduce temperature to 325-350 and continue baking for 25-35 minutes.

Let it cool then refrigerate till ready to serve!

Turned out kinda pretty!

We also pulled the turkey out of the brine and put it in the roaster to let it drain.

That will get cooked tomorrow, after I get the stuffing made (with help from my Mama!) and stuffed in the turkey!