Pennsylvania Dutch Adventures: Snitz Pie
Wandering into the realm of the PA Dutch, and an unknown pie. This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission on any sales made through the links.
Whilst coming up with the idea for this blog and deciding on the types of homemaking adventures I wanted to have, I have had the privilege to go through both my Mom's and her Mother's cookbooks. There were church cookbooks, but also locally printed ones. The ones nearest and dearest to me are those of my culture, the Pennsylvania Dutch.
For those who don’t know, the Pennsylvania Dutch are American descendants of German, Swiss, and other Palatinate groups who came over to the States in the 1700’s and 1800’s. I hate to say this, but think Dwight Schrute, with less staplers in Jell-o. Although come to think of it, we really do put lots of things in Jell-o too.
So this paragraph here is your history lesson, folks: Feel free to skip it if the words “palatinate” and “descendants” had your eyelids already drooping in boredom. Even amidst the seemingly homogeneous food and language of the Pennsylvania Dutch, there are different factions and groups. These are based on American county, religious affiliation, and the region everyone's ancestors originally came from. PA Dutch is widely a spoken language (Over time, German became mostly for important things like church and marriage certificates, etc.), so PA Dutch spellings vary as much as each recipe’s ingredients.
So when choosing a recipe for Schnitz pie (Dried Apple pie, also spelled Snitz in certain areas, including our family), out of all the possible places to start, I went straight to our family's recipe cards for the closest cultural connection. However. Like many family recipes, this one had some frighteningly simple instructions such as “soak the apples” and “cook until soft.” Vague and open ended. It was also assumed that I'd have pie crusts handy, or at least be able to whip them up quickly. I picture someone waving their hands saying, “you know, do it how I always do it”. Alarming for a first-timer, certainly.
My Mom's mother is no longer with us, and like a good procrastinator I took up baking too late to ask her about the recipe. I'm very fortunate to have my Mom and so I can be helped by what she remembers and what she has made in the past. She hadn't made this recipe but could give me some helpful background about the ingredients, including the fact that “snitz” is dried apple slices, not apple chunks like a typical American apple pie.
And she and Grandma used pre-dried apple slices for their own Snitz un Knepp (very popular apples and meat/dumplings recipe), so I felt good about not taking on the effort to dry my own either. My adventurous nature has limits per recipe, and this one put me at the edge as it was.
Part of Mom’s recipe book collection. These little books have great things inside them, one treasure after another in each recipe! Like a… well, what would be the German equivalent of a Matryoshka doll? ‘It wonders me so,’ as a good Dutchie might say.
When there were gaps in the instructions to fill in, I turned to the old Pennsylvania Dutch and Mennonite cookbooks and church cookbooks of yore to see if they had insight. Snitz pie was found in a few, and some of these had further instructions.
I became engrossed in my Grandmother's church Adult Sunday School class cookbooks from the 1950's, when my Mom was a child. I wonder about the lives of the recipe-submitting church-goers. I picture them floundering in their younger days as I have done, as they strove to copy their own Grandmother's recipes. Perhaps those older recipes were even more vague than what I had received. An incremental vagueness stretching back to the very beginning of time when someone's Grandmother’s instruction was simply “Make the pie... Serve.” Shudder.
Back in the here and now, I had quite the adventure mustering up a decent apple offering. My experience and tips are down below for this hearty and delicious dish, with as many instructions as I could muster. Bon Appetit, or hopefully, Gut Essen (good eating)!
Method:
I started with a spreadsheet of most of the Snitz Pie recipes my Mom and I found. Because nothing says creativity and “getting the feel” of the art of baking like a spreadsheet, amiright? I wanted to compare ingredients, get as much instruction as I could get, and compare cooking times to see if I wanted to stick with Grandma’s recipe or combine with another. After all, if my Mom didn’t remember this recipe, had Grandma even liked it? Maybe she had copied it down but hated it once it was made, and quickly shoved it to the back of her recipe box. It’s a mystery! But one that I was ready to solve.
Like a curious Dutchie version of Hercule Poirot, I arranged my thoughts to tackle this conundrum. The biggest difference (besides the spelling of snitz vs. schnitz, which I left out of the spreadsheet) was the addition of orange juice and grated peel. I waffled here, as I felt this could make or break the recipe. Really, two cups of coffee went down before coming to a simple conclusion. I willed myself to get it together, and decided to go Grandma’s route without the extras.
Preparing the Snitz
The pre-dried apple slices I bought from Whole Foods were already soft and listed water as an ingredient, so I wasn’t sure how much I’d really have to do to them. I soaked them in the 1-1/2 cup water overnight anyway. Somehow despite my spreadsheet and the simplicity of the recipe, I got overwhelmed with it all and managed to miss the part about cooking til soft. Oops. Luckily, my slices already were soft enough to continue.
I tried running them through a grater as indicated. By this I mean shoving them against a grater til they smushed. This wasn’t a super method as the grater seemed to eat the majority of the apples and left the rest not smooth. It seriously was like the majority of them just disappeared (not inside the grater, trust me I checked there).
I don’t own a food processor so I moved to our Magic Bullet. This did the trick. I picked the apples out of the water and put into the Bullet cup.
Next I mixed in the sugar and spices. Instead of the powdered cloves, I used the Apple Pie Spice mix from The Spice House (A company in Chicago with a diverse catalog of spices and blends). This mix includes powdered cloves, but also includes anise, ginger, and other spices for a more complex mix. I also used their Saigon Cinnamon, which smelled strong and heavenly. Spoiler alert, I really like how this combo worked on the sugary apple mix.
After mixing together the sugar and spice and everything nice, I let the mixture sit as I prepared the top crust.
Preparing the Pie
I’m not providing a tutorial on the pie crust because I’ve only made it once before and honestly it had questionable success then. This time it came out light and flaky and delicious, but looked rather terrible as I hadn’t rolled it out very well. Baby steps people, baby steps.
A questionably pieced-together top crust with slits, prior to baking. Bottom crust is generic frozen pie bottom. There’s nothing wrong with a little shortcut - no shame here on this blog, folks.
There was less total filling than I had expected, and the pie looked a little flat when assembled. But I suppose not everything can be bursting to the brim with Instagram fullness. I cooked the pie for the prescribed 15 minutes at 425 degrees F, and then 35 minutes at 375 degrees. Then I added another 5 minutes, because my crust wasn’t quite done.
That extra 5 minutes really fixed my crust. Did the apples need it? Probably not, but it didn’t hurt the mixtures.
Applebutter-colored cooked pie filling.
I was happy with how this pie turned out. It tasted delicious, mostly like apple butter only more solid, and the spices came through beautifully. I’d make it again as it is easy and cozy, it’ll be especially nice in the Fall during apple harvest season. The texture of the pie is surprising but nice. It wasn’t runny or liquid-y, just smooth and it held together well.
RECIPE AND INSTRUCTIONS:
2 cups snitz (dried apple slices - see notes above. available as soft, still moist pieces at Whole Foods.)
2/3 cup sugar
1-1/2 cup water for soaking
*1/4 teaspoon powdered cloves (* or use 1/4 teaspoon Apple Pie Spice Mix)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 pie crusts
Instructions:
Soak snitz in water and cook snitz in same water until soft.
Rub snitz through grater (or use food processor/Magic Bullet or similar
to get snitz to a smooth texture)
Add sugar and spices
Pour into unbaked pie crust. Cover with top crust and cut vents and/or use pie bird.
Bake at 425F for 15 minutes, then bake at 375 for 35 minutes or until crust is golden.
Cool and serve.
In Conclusion
So this has been my family’s Pennsylvania Dutch recipe and method for Snitz Pie. I won’t be offended if you play with this recipe yourself and make it differently. After all, if the 1950’s cookbooks can have that many varieties, surely we with the great big internet have room for more.
Does your family have a recipe for a special pie? Has it changed over the years as it’s passed down? It’s fun to track the evolution of these recipes!