Apple Secrets Every Baker (and Cook) Should Know

Are you the person at the orchard u-pick who gathers a big sackful with no plans, or the baker who wants to master a from-scratch pie? Whether you whip up a snacking cake or do turnovers that start with a tube of biscuit dough, knowing what apples work best in recipes is key. Food52 chatted with top pie purveyors and harvest pros to help you level up your knowledge in the face of so many varieties. Remember these mantras under the apple tree or at the farm store or supermarket.

Be Picky With Pie Apples

Little Pie Company, a big New York City legend since 1985, sends down-home wafts of warm sugar, butter, and fruit through the Theater District. Creator Arnold Wilkerson, a former actor, grew up baking with his mother and grandmother in California. Soon after the shop opened, the Sour Cream Apple Walnut Pie was golden. People couldn’t get enough. Now Little Pie rolls out thousands of pies (10-inch, $45) in November alone to sell and to ship. Sarah Jessica Parker and Oprah are fans.

To copy Little Pie, choose apples that don’t get mushy in the oven. They use Golden Delicious for Old-fashioned Apple Pie, Sugarless Apple Pie, and Fresh Apple Turnovers. Green Granny Smiths are sliced and layered in the signature sour cream pie. “These apples keep their form during the baking process,” says Wilkerson. “And they are generally available all year round.” The stand-alone shop sources fruit from New York State, Pennsylvania, Washington State, and Connecticut.

At the end of his acting career, Wilkerson played Denzel Washington’s brother in a theater production of “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men.” But since then, he has been all in as a pie man.

Look for a Mix of Colors

Bobbie Lloyd, CEO and Chief Baking Officer of beloved Magnolia Bakery, with outposts on Central Park South, in train hubs, and even in India, divulged her rainbow approach to pie making.

“Apples are a fun fruit to work with. I like to use a mix of colors to get the right balance of tart and sweet,” she says. For muffins or pie, she starts with Granny Smith (tart, crisp), to keep desserts from tasting overly sugary. “Out of the seven apples I use in one pie, four are Granny Smith. The rest I’ll round out with varieties including Golden Delicious, which is lightly sweet but not too juicy, so the filling won’t be runny,” adds the author of The Magnolia Bakery Handbook (2020) and Magnolia Bakery Handbook of Icebox Desserts (2025).

“Honeycrisp is a fan favorite raw because of its snap and juiciness, but those same qualities can make it trickier in the kitchen,” says Lynsee Gibbons of the U.S. Apple Association in McLean, Virginia. “The high water content can leave pies runny unless you add extra thickener.” Gibbons adds that typically, higher sugar varieties (including Honeycrisp, Gala, and Fuji) break down more.

Magnolia (started in New York’s West Village in 1996) makes room in fall next to its famous Fresh Banana Pudding and pink Carrie Cupcake for “apple-forward” desserts such as Apple Crumb Pie, Apple Crumb Bars, and Harvest Apple Cake.

“The Apple Crisp Pudding in the Icebox cookbook is one of my favorites. It’s easy to make at home,” Lloyd adds. Move over, bananas.

Check out these guides to apple varieties.

Get Crafty With Cocktails & More

Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the celebrated farm-to-table restaurant on the former Rockefeller estate dairy farm in Westchester County, New York, offers a handpicked multi-course meal that changes daily and even from table to table. The dinner is sourced from the surrounding fields and pasture, as well as other local Hudson Valley farms.

Donovan Ingram, Blue Hill's Beverage Innovation Manager, said “The Orchard” is his favorite apple cocktail. It is similar to a White Negroni but made with apple-based gin, Suze, and homemade vermouth from tree-fermented apples (they are left on the tree as the seasons change).

We asked pastry chef Yao Kin Chee about how local apples are incorporated into other seasonal offerings.

“We like apples with good crunch for snacking—Cripps Pink (aka Pink Lady), Honeycrisps, and Newtown Pippin, an apple discovered in Queens, New York,” says Chef Chee. “We’ve served Newtown Pippin slices with local honey.”

For pies and galettes, he calls Northern Spy “a standout, with that classic sweet-tart flavor.” Mutsu (aka Crispin) is crisp, sharp, and “large enough that a few apples go a long way.”

“We’ve also used Wolf River, which is almost comically oversized,” he adds. “One apple can fill a whole pie.” Honeycrisp is the pick for Blue Hill’s apple butter, a nostalgic favorite. Red-fleshed varieties such as Redfield, with a ruby-toned juice, are striking when used raw in juices, Chef Chee says.

Find Local Orchards & Heirloom Apples

Mark Canright is like a modern Johnny Appleseed, spreading love for the organic apples he grows in the Musconetcong River Valley in New Jersey. He is a walking apple-pedia: “The original Granny Smith was named for a lady in Australia known as Granny Smith” and “An inch a week of water is ideal where I’m growing apples.” Raised on his father’s farm, Farmer John’s Organic Produce, the first organic farm in the state (1974), Canright fell in love with ancient apple and pear trees there.

In 2003, he bought Comeback Farm, “a 40-acre fixer-upper” in Bethlehem Township. He grows sought-after heritage apples, including Esopus Spitzenburg (a Thomas Jefferson favorite), Black Twig, Pound Sweet, Sheepnose, Westfield Seek-No-Further, and Calville Blanc (a French culinary darling for traditional tarte tatin). Followers who seek these historic varieties (and his apple butter and applesauce, made purely from heirloom apples) at farmers’ markets rave about their flavor and uncommon style.

“Heirloom apples have complex flavors,” notes Canright. “Descriptions include words like mysterious and unfamiliar, pear and pineapple, acid and sugar, nutmeg, and allspice.” Many heirlooms, such as Pound Sweet and Sheepnose, are excellent combined to make applesauce or baked into a fall apple crisp.

“In the U.S., we expect our apples to look impeccable. This is not the world of organic apples in New Jersey. The world that loves these heirloom apples turns up its nose at Honeycrisp,” Canright says. “My apples almost always have bumps, divots, or blotches that would keep them off grocery shelves.”

But that won’t keep these out of your hands. “The best apple is one you eat off the tree, standing out in the orchard on a beautiful, crisp fall day,” adds the farmer. “When they’re right off the tree, there’s extra pop.”

How does Canright love his apples? With oats, for breakfast or a bedtime snack. “I put my oats on sesame tahini or on plain yogurt, and I hold my spoon in one hand and my apple in the other hand and go back and forth to take a spoonful and a bite. The fruit is your sweetness,” notes the farmer. “I will retire from fruit growing when I’m 100 years old.”

Alice Garbarini Hurley is a writer and content creator. She was a long-time magazine staffer and blogged daily from home and away for more than 10 years. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, where she attempts to cook for a fast-food-seeking teen girl, vegetarian husband, and vegan scientist daughter. Alice loves Cape Cod, Maine, fashion, food, flowers, vintage pink china, cookbooks, and lipstick. She is fueled by boutique coffee.