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This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter pie crust with a homemade brown sugar butterscotch sauce

This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter crust with brown sugar butterscotch sauce!

I hope that eating more pie was your New Year’s Resolution, because I just got a little crazy with the pie baking!

I waited a full 10 days before posting sweets, which I feel should be a socially acceptable time for everyone to recover from the holidays. No?

This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter crust with brown sugar butterscotch sauce!
My Top Pie Baking Tips
Everything you need to know about pies from a professional pastry chef!

Well hurry up because this apple butterscotch pie is beyond divine!

Sweet and tart apples baked to perfection with my butterscotch sauce all encased in a flakey pastry. You could also make a mini version by adding butterscotch sauce to these apple hand pies!

This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter crust with brown sugar butterscotch sauce!

All I ask is that you save a little of the brown sugar butterscotch sauce to drizzle (or pour) on top! Swoon.

This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter crust with brown sugar butterscotch sauce!

Dicing the apples into smaller pieces allows the filling to cook at the same rate as the crust, so you don’t have to pre-cook your filling. Most of the apples are soft and supple but some have retained a little bit of bite so that you aren’t just eating applesauce. Personally if I wanted an applesauce pie, I would just pour applesauce in a pie crust and bake it. I like the fruit to retain its shape and texture but be soft.

This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter pie crust with a homemade brown sugar butterscotch sauce!

Butterscotch sauce is like a caramel made with brown sugar instead of white and it is perfect when paired with the lightly spiced apples. In each bite you taste butterscotch, apples, cinnamon and just a hint of cardamom.

Cardamom and cinnamon give this pie a surprising depth of flavor. And butterscotch? Well, welcome to your new baking obsession. Once you open the door to butterscotch, might I suggest you make these butterscotch brownies, butterscotch pudding and butterscotch cookies next? For science? For science!

A little bit of lemon keeps the filling from being saccharine sweet. You’re welcome.

Now stop thinking about your Resolutions and make this pie!!

This Butterscotch Apple Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter crust with brown sugar butterscotch sauce!
5 from 1 ratings

Apple Butterscotch Pie

This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter pie crust with a homemade brown sugar butterscotch sauce
Prep: 45 minutes
Cook: 1 hour
Total: 1 hour 45 minutes
Servings: 12 people

Ingredients 
 

For the All-Butter Pie Crust (you could also use 2 store-bought crusts instead):

  • 2 ¼ cups pastry flour measured by fluffing the flour then spooning it in
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 9 tablespoons unsalted butter cold, cubed into ½ inch cubes
  • 2 ¼ oz cold water or as much or as little as needed

For the Pie Filling:

Optional Toppings for Crust:

Makes: 9inch round

Instructions 

Prepare Pie Crusts:

  • Whisk together pastry flour, salt and sugar. Using your stand mixer, cut in the butter until you have slightly larger than pea sized pieces.
  • Slowly begin to add your ice water a tablespoon at a time. At this point be very careful with the amount of water that you add because it only needs a few teaspoons more.
  • When your dough is shaggy, which means it looks like shards or strands of pastry, and there is still some loose flour, turn out your dough from the mixer and work the dough together by gathering it and pressing away from you with the heal of your hand. Do this JUST until it comes together. If it is crumbling, then dip your hand in a little ice water and pat it on the pastry dough. Seriously, that’s it. Remember the gluten!
  • Divide the dough in half and press each half into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours or overnight. If you chill your dough overnight, you will need to let it rest a bit before rolling or it will be too cold and it will crack.
  • Roll out half the pie dough and line a 9 or 10 inch deep-dish pie dish; refrigerate. Roll out the second half of the pie dough for the top crust, place on a baking sheet and refrigerate.

Prepare Filling:

  • In a large bowl mix together the apples, lemon juice, cardamom, cinnamon, salt, brown sugar and cornstarch.

Assemble and Bake:

  • Pour half of the filling into the pie dish and then pour approximately 1 ½ cups butterscotch sauce on top. Mound the remaining apple filling on top, creating a mound in the center. Pour the remaining butterscotch sauce on top.
  • Cover the pie with your second crust and decoratively crimp the edges. Try to get as good a seal as you can so the butterscotch sauce stays inside the pie! Refrigerate the pie on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 20 minutes.
  • Remove pie from the refrigerator and cut some vent holes near the top. Lightly brush the pastry with heavy cream, making sure it doesn’t pool anywhere because this will make your crust soggy, and then sprinkle generously with sanding sugar.
  • Bake 20 minutes at 425℉, then lower the oven temperature to 350℉ and continue baking for 1 hour or until the filling is soft and bubbly and the crust is brown. You can test the filling by inserting a knife into one of the vent holes. There should be no resistance from the apples! Let cool before cutting or serving. I know, the agony!

Notes

Let’s get into it like a PROFESSIONAL CHEF:

Presentation Bonus points for serving this pie with a mound of vanilla bean ice cream or a generous spoonful of vanilla bean anglaise. You could even drizzle some extra butterscotch sauce on top–it’s just delicious! (FYI: A double batch of this butterscotch sauce recipe would be enough for this pie with about 1 cup left over for drizzling on top!) I also love the lattice top I baked on my blueberry pie, so I made you a lattice top tutorial video! Let your pie cool before cutting or serving.
Flavor Tips If a dessert is so sweet that you can only eat two bites, then it is too damn sweet. With that in mind I chose moderately tart apples (Braeburn, pink lady, Cortland, Macoun, and Ginger Gold), tossed them in granulated and brown sugar, and balanced the sweetness with lemon juice. Lemon adds a nice floral dimension and the cardamom just makes it a party. 
Technique – Dicing the apples into smaller pieces allows the filling to cook at the same rate as the crust, so you don’t have to pre-cook your filling. The pie crust can be made using any of the 5 ways in my video tutorials! I like to leave my filling melding for at least 30 minutes to draw out some of the moisture from the apples.
Helpful Tools – The stand mixer is your best friend for this recipe, but I promise you could also make it by hand with a pastry blender! I find it very helpful to have all my ingredients and tools cooled for making pie crust. I also generously flour my surface when rolling out my crust!
Variations – You could make this in a Vodka Pie Crust or even a store-bought {tear} crust. You could add some different warming spices based on your preferences! Homemade Apple Pie Spice Mix would be lovely! If you use sweeter apples, omit the extra brown sugar.
Storage You can make the filling the night before and refrigerate in the bowl for assembly the next day if you wish. Store baked apple pie in a covered dish at room temperature or tightly wrapped in the refrigerator or freezer. Baked apple pie will keep for 3 days at room temperature, 10 days in the refrigerator or up to 3 months tightly wrapped in the freezer.

Nutrition

Calories: 731kcal | Carbohydrates: 105g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 34g | Saturated Fat: 26g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 4g | Trans Fat: 0.3g | Cholesterol: 23mg | Sodium: 324mg | Potassium: 332mg | Fiber: 6g | Sugar: 82g | Vitamin A: 348IU | Vitamin C: 16mg | Calcium: 61mg | Iron: 1mg
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Calories: 731
Like this? Leave a comment below!
This Apple Butterscotch Pie is absolute heaven! Lightly spiced apples baked inside a flakey all-butter crust with brown sugar butterscotch sauce!

Hi, I’m Chef Lindsey!

I am the baker, recipe developer, writer, and photographer behind Chef Lindsey Farr. I believe in delicious homemade food and the power of dessert!

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15 Comments

  1. There is a place for pie year round! I like the yummy spices and flavors in your apple pie! Yum!

  2. CARDAMOM FOR THE WIN! Obsessed with how you snuck it in here, and loving that dreamy butterscotch sauce 🙂

  3. So glad you haven’t abandoned your obsession with Cardamom because combining it with cinnamon and a touch of almond extract has me swooning! Or maybe the swooning is because my blood sugar is low in which case – quick hand me this WHOLE pie and ALL the sauce – only way for me to feel better 🙂
    This seriously is fantastic! Oh BTW – my daughter and I used your 2 knoves method when we made gluten free pie crusts for pecan pie this Christmas past – we had so much fun – thanks so much for those videos!

    1. Oh the butterscotch sauce! Swoon is right! I;m so glad you tried the 2 knives method…it’s definitely fun when you do it with someone else! 🙂

  4. Ah, I’m glad to see you back on the dessert train, Lindsey! Now if only that train made a stop up north…maybe you could just swing by Penn Station today and load one of these pies on the Adirondack Express for me? Kthx. 🙂

    1. LOL! I have a feeling the pies wouldn’t quite make it to upstate! But i hear butterscotch sauce and curling are a wonderful pairing! 😉

  5. That butterscotch sauce looks incredible! And what better to do with it than pour it over pie?! I’ll take a big slice!

  6. 10 days? That seems rather excessive! 😉 This pie looks incredible hun, that butterscotch sauce – I’m in golden syrupyheaven!

    1. I know right?! But it seemed appropriate for those trying to be healthy in the New Year…not that I am in the camp!