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Excerpted from our Making Dough cookbook from Russell van Kraayenburg.

YIELD: 1 (9-inch) closed pie  |  PREP TIME: 30 minutes  |  BAKE TIME: 30 minutes

Ingredients

2 pounds prepared Pie Dough (double the recipe on page 50)

2 ounces (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature

6 pounds Pink Lady apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 8 wedges each

3 ounces granulated sugar

3 ounces brown sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon salt

1 ounce (¼ cup) cornstarch

1 egg, beaten (egg wash)

Directions

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 400°F. Divide prepared pie dough into 2 (1-inch-thick) disks, wrap tightly in parchment paper, and refrigerate. Heat butter in a large pot over medium-low heat. Add apples and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, until they begin to soften. Add sugars, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and salt. Stir until evenly mixed. Cook for another 10 minutes, until apples are soft and juices begin to thicken.

2. Mix 1/2 cup water and cornstarch in a small bowl. Stir into apple mixture. Increase heat to medium-high and cook, stirring frequently, until filling comes to a boil and thickens. Cook, stirring constantly, for another 30 seconds. Set aside.

3. Place one dough disk on a lightly floured surface. Roll into a circle about 14 inches in diameter. Transfer dough to a 9-inch pie dish and press into the bottom of the dish, taking care not to let dough stretch. Lightly press dough down around the edges of the dish and cut off any excess. Pour in filling, creating a mound in the center. Set aside.

4. Place second disk of dough on a lightly floured surface. Roll into a circle about 14 inches in diameter and place on top of pie dish. Press edges to seal pie shut. Cut 4 tear-drop holes in the center of the pie to let steam escape during cooking. Cut excess dough from edges. Create a rope edge (see page 54). Lightly brush dough with egg wash. Bake for about 30 minutes, until crust is golden brown. Let cool on a wire rack before serving.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

We’ve all had that one class. You know the one. You drag your feet getting there because you just can’t stay awake. Maybe the teacher speaks in a monotone. Maybe the subject matter is really uninteresting. Maybe it’s a government-controlled test to determine your attention span. Who knows! But either way, if you’re looking for a way to combat sleepiness in that class, we have some tips for you, courtesy of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: College Edition.

Sarah Shotts is a blogger, vlogger, and “nerdlywed.” Recently married, she blogs about living a nerdy life as a newlywed on her blog. She also vlogs about all things geeky on the Swot Sisters Youtube channel she created with her sister Mary. When she’s not making stuff on the internet she’s busy teaching theatre classes and doing wedding photography and video.
 

(image via David Mitchell on Facebook)

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas completely floored me: the step-pyramid narrative structure, the inventiveness of each of the interwoven worlds, the neologisms and peculiarly delightful turns of phrase are all nothing short of fantastic, in every sense of the world. And while I’m as jazzed as anyone to crack open his latest novel The Bone Clocks, I’m also already dreading the day when it’s over. Feel the same way? Here are eight picks for us Mitchell fans to read next.

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Happy Friday, everyone! There is a most literalicious, booksquisite weekend and week ahead. Enjoy, and if you have any particularly pagesome and readiculous experiences (sipping cider with a great new novel, or laughing 'til you cry at a reading), tell us @apiarymagazine on Twitter. 

love, 

APIARY

I was probably 11 or 12 the first time I read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and ever since then I’ve read the book about every five years.  Why do I keep coming back to it?  There’s something I can’t shake in the story—the slow descent from order to chaos, the images it conjures of a society created entirely by boys, and of course the characters: the wise Ralph, the alluring and dangerous Jack, the annoying (but ultimately correct) Piggy.

Because I am who I am, I can’t help crossing Lord of the Flies in my mind with Shakespeare’s Tempest.  Both start with a wreck and take place on an island.  If Lord of the Flies had started with a shipwreck instead of a plane crash, one could imagine Prospero’s daughter Miranda looking on with fear:

Miranda: The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,

But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,

Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered

With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,

Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,

Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd.

Had I been any god of power, I would

Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere

It should the good ship so have swallow’d and

The fraughting souls within her.

In this version, Caliban goes around planting fear and unrest among the boys.  Ariel tries as hard as he can to undo Caliban’s work, but ultimate it’s too late: where Tempest moves from chaos to order and resolution, William Shakespeare’s Lord of the Flies turns from relative order to chaos and destruction.  Prospero’s efforts at pacification fail, and only a passing ship manages to restore order and rescue the boys.  This becomes the Anti-Tempest, the one where things don’t work out in the end.

And maybe that’s why I loved Lord of the Flies, even as a middle schooler.  Because sometimes things are messy, sometimes “happily ever after” isn’t a thing.  Sometimes everything goes to hell and all the adults can do is look away:

The tears began to flow and sobs shook him [Ralph]. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

The officer, surrounded by these noises, was moved and a little embarrassed.  He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance.