Just One Spice Can Fool People Into Thinking Your Apple Pie Is Bakery-Made

Professional and home bakers have discovered many ways to breathe new life into classic apple pie. Tips range from using several apple varieties, adding a splash of bourbon, and mixing sour cream into the filling. Not that traditional apple pie actually needs any help; it's a beloved favorite for a reason. Still, it's always fun to play with new flavors and make new discoveries. So when we stumbled upon the idea of adding Chinese five spice to the American favorite, we had to check it out. We discovered a flavor so unique and special, it would fool even the finest palates into thinking the pie is bakery-made.

Chinese five spice is a powdered spice blend that you can find in many supermarkets. It contains two spices that you often see in apple pie (cinnamon and cloves) along with ground star anise, Sichuan pepper, and fennel seeds. Collectively, the blend results in a warm depth like you've never experienced in apple pie, along with a brighter fruit flavor due to the contrast of the sweet apples to tingly pepper and licorice-y anise and fennel. The spices make apple pie taste almost exotic, like it didn't just come from a bakery, but a really good one. Creating this delicious dessert couldn't be easier; prepare your favorite apple pie recipe and replace the cinnamon and any other spices with about one and a quarter teaspoons of Chinese five spice.

Today, Chinese five spice is a fairly well known spice blend that's commonly used as a flavoring for meats, marinades, soups, and — now we know — apple pie. However, it's believed that the blend of spices was originally used for medicinal purposes. It was said that the five spices used in the powder represented balance in the human body, or Yin and Yang. Balance meant the harmony between the five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and spicy, all of which Chinese five spice covers.

Generally, the five spice blends that you find in stores will have the five aforementioned spices in them, but some might include other ingredients, like ginger, nutmeg, turmeric, cardamom, licorice, galangal, or orange peel. If you like the sound of any of these, you can easily make your own Chinese five spice at home to put in your apple pie and other recipes. If it ends up being a six or seven spice blend, all the better. First, gather the spices you want to include. Keep in mind that you should weigh each ingredient and write down the amounts, in case you want to recreate the blend again in the future. Toast the spices that can be toasted in a pan to release their oils, and grind them in a spice or coffee grinder.