All the great taste of a pie and very easy to assemble.  We love Ina Garten’s recipe from  Foodnetwork.com.  We’ve made this in the fall at the height of apple season and then in March with the apples we’d saved up from the harvest.  Delicious every time!

What we learned after having made a few of these:

• We used pre-made crust for our version. We know homemade crust is the tastiest. But, if your time is limited, the pre-made crust is a great substitute
• We skipped the food processor when making the crumb topping. We sliced the cold butter into 1/2″ cubes and cut them into the sugar + flour mixture with a pastry fork, working it by hand at the end. Less muss, less equipment to clean.
• Pleating the edges – Love that we get to make pleats. Small hands can help. Tip: Dampen a finger in water and use that as glue to hold the pleats together.
• No oranges to zest?  It will still taste great

Baking time and the edges – We found that it took a bit longer to bake the apples than the recipe described. No matter what the timer says, keep baking the crostata until a toothpick shows the apples are tender. Note: To keep the pastry edge from getting too dark while the apples finish baking, we covered the edges with strips of aluminum foil. That was about 30 minutes into the baking process.

This recipe calls for Fuji apples, but any good baking apple will work. Honeycrisp and Jonathans are great options as well