We spent a quiet afternoon indoors, baking apple pie over a cup of tea. Soft light streamed through the window and draped across our kitchen table as we worked the dough and prepared the filling. In no particular hurry, we diced Roman Beauty apples from a local orchard, adding spices and sugar until the wafting smells of cinnamon permeated our little apartment.

Although all the pies are quite mini, my husband and I like to call this one below, the little chubster. He ended up with a little extra crust, tucked all around the weave and filling.

Some tips I’ve learned along the way when baking apple pie:

• Freeze your dough for a few minutes as soon as you’ve laid it in the tin before adding the filling. This helps prevent the dough from absorbing juices from the filling.

• Cook the filling prior to baking to help release the moisture from the apples. This helps prevent your crust from getting soggy at the bottom. It also helps minimize the gaps between your crust and filling during the baking process.

• Refreeze the finished pie prior to baking for a few minutes. This helps your pie retain its shape.

• Egg wash does wonders for showing definition in the dough indentations and artwork you’ve created.

We slowly finished eating the pies a day at at time, slicing each in quarters to share. And as we worked the long week at work, we remembered the quiet times in our kitchen and savored the sweet moments, enveloped in the same sense of peace as we worked the dough to perfection.