Apple Pie

Ingredients

• 8 small Granny Smith apples, or as needed
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 (9 inch) double-crust pie pastry, thawed

Directions

1. Peel and core apples, then thinly slice. Set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
3. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and stir to form a paste; cook until fragrant, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add both sugars and water; bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from the heat.
4. Press one pastry into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch pie pan. Roll out remaining pastry so it will overhang the pie by about 1/2 inch. Cut pastry into eight 1-inch strips.
5. Place sliced apples into the bottom crust, forming a slight mound. Lay four pastry strips vertically and evenly spaced over apples, using longer strips in the center and shorter strips at the edges.
6. Make a lattice crust: Fold the first and third strips all the way back so they're almost falling off the pie. Lay one of the unused strips perpendicularly over the second and fourth strips, then unfold the first and third strips back into their original position.
7. Fold the second and fourth vertical strips back. Lay one of the three unused strips perpendicularly over top. Unfold the second and fourth strips back into their original position.
8. Repeat Steps 6 and 7 to weave in the last two strips of pastry. Fold and trim excess dough at the edges as necessary, and pinch to secure.
9. Slowly and gently pour sugar-butter mixture over lattice crust, making sure it seeps over sliced apples. Brush some onto lattice, but make sure it doesn't run off the sides.
10. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and continue baking until apples are soft, 35 to 45 minutes.

Imagery

Recipe Websites

Food Network

This website makes the recipe easy to read by giving it enough space on the page, while also condensing the text so your eyes don't have to travel far. The recipe section is two columns: ingredients on the left and instructions on the right. This allows me to easily look between the ingredients and the instructions, which is very helpful while in the process of cooking. It also cleary distinguishes the different steps and separates the header from the instructions.

Tasty

This site keeps all the recipe text to the left side, while showing a video on the right. This site ackowledges that having text spread across the entire screen is a bit too far and keeping it towards one side allows the user to read it quicker.

Salt and Lavendar

I actually find this recipe is very hard to read because the space given to the article on the page is very small. However, I picked it for one feature I wanted to highlight. On the recipe card, the user is able to click 1x, 2x or 3x and the measurement of each ingredient changes to double or triple, which I found useful.

Non-Recipe Websites

Rob Santos Portfolio

This portfolio for a video game programming professor at WashU demonstrates good design choices because of the menu on the left and the main content on the right. The menu is easy to navigate and the content has enough space but not too much. The image gallery works well and the resume section is able to compact a lot of information in a readable format.

Olivia Rodrigo

This site for the artist Olivia Rodrigo is professional and usable, while maintaining pops of personality and creativity. It looks as if there are stickers plastered around the site, like in a diary or journal. The site maintains Olivia's brand well and I hope to add similar pops of fun to my websites.

W3Schools

I picked W3Schools because of the "try it yourself" feature on their articles. This feature allows users to test out code that the articles explain to readers. I think this is a great example of understanding the goals of users and what features can help them.