The crust on this Crazy Crust Apple Pie is crazy and that’s because you don’t really have to make a crust at all. It’s a crust-free technique but you still end up with a complete, crust-surrounded pie in the end. Pure crazy magic and I never would have known about it if I hadn’t found this gem of a recipe card.

This card came to me through the Recipe Tin Project, which is a project where I cook my way through an old recipe tin full of vintage recipes. But you might have already guessed that. It’s chock full of old recipe cards, most of which seem to be from the ’60s and ’70s, though some are older. I love food history, and the idea is to breathe new life into these recipes from the past and maybe learn a technique or two from them along the way. The recipes come from different people with different handwriting; some have sweet illustrations while others are on plain (often smudged and stained) index cards.

This particular recipe is written on the back of an index card, the unlined side. It’s also written vertically, which I think is the first card I’ve come across that’s oriented that way. An unconventional use of an index card! I like it. It’s reasonably well smudged, which I like to think means that it was reasonably well loved too. While some old recipe cards can be hard to decipher, this one has ingredients and steps listed out in an easy to follow fashion, and that’s something I’m always grateful for.

What Do You Need For Crazy Crust Apple Pie?

Well, you don’t need a pie crust. Instead you need flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, an egg, shortening, and water. That’s the “crust.” Beyond that, you need apple pie filling, lemon juice, and cinnamon (though really this method would work with any fruit filling you’d want to work with).

How Do You Make Crazy Crust Apple Pie?

You simply mix together the crust ingredients with a hand mixer and then pour it into a pie pan. Then you pour your filling into the center of that batter but you don’t stir whatsoever. You can smooth the filling out a bit if it’s too mounded in the center.

And then you bake. For about 45 minutes in a 425 degree oven.

And in that oven, magic happens. The batter bakes into a beautiful crisp golden ring around the filling and lines the bottom too. It’s cakier than a traditional crust but it does the job just fine of supporting a sweet fruit filling, even if the slices are a little messier. It’s a little more like cobbler than a true pie but a great way to get a pie on the table in very quick fashion when you need one!