Starting with jars of canned apples
The filling for these pies is not fresh fruit. Lynn uses apples she canned the year before, and she points to her own video on how she canned them, which is written up in canning apples the easy way.
Before she opens anything she checks the seals, and she checks them twice. First she takes the rims off and opens a jar so you can hear the sound the lid makes, which tells her the apples were canned right and have kept for the year. Then she does the second test: with the ring off she picks the whole jar up by the lid alone, and it holds, which she calls a good seal. All four jars pass, and she uses all four.
Cooking the apples down
She works with two skillets, one to cook the apples in and one to fry the pies in. The apple pan starts on a medium low heat with a whole stick of butter melting in it, and then the apples go in gently, juice and all.
The seasoning is short: one cup of light brown sugar and one tablespoon of cinnamon, stirred in with the same measuring spoon. The skillet is full to the top at that point, which she says is fine because it is going to cook down and the juice will disappear. Later she brings the camera back to show how far it cooked down from that full skillet before she starts filling pies.
The crust
The dough is mixed by hand in a bowl. It starts with four cups of all-purpose flour, with extra kept out for dusting the counter later, then one tablespoon of baking powder, because all-purpose flour has nothing in it, and a quarter teaspoon of pink salt. The butter goes in frozen and grated on a grater, which is why she froze it in the first place. She does not say how much butter or how much milk she uses.
She folds the grated butter into the flour with her hands, and when it starts softening and sticking she sprinkles a little flour over it to loosen it back up, then works the milk in a little at a time until the dough comes together. The dough goes onto a lightly dusted counter, where she shapes it into a long oval, cuts it down the center, and cuts that into pieces, one per pie.
Rolling is the patient part. She keeps the counter and the rolling pin dusted so the dough will not stick as bad and rolls each piece out thin. To cut the rounds she dusts the rim of a bowl with flour and presses it into the dough, then runs a knife gently around it for a perfect circle. Sometimes the bowl cuts it clean and sometimes she has to help it around the edge.
Filling, sealing, and frying
Each round gets about two tablespoons of filling, maybe two and a half, on one side only, because she wants enough in there to taste. Then she wets the dough all the way around the edge with water so it will stick, folds it over, and closes it with her fingers first, so any filling that squeezes out can be worked back in, before crimping all the way around with a fork. Little things matter here: she dries the tray with a paper towel between pies so the next crust does not get wet, and warns that a brush gets the edge wetter than you really want.
The frying skillet is heating the whole time. She turns the oil on to between medium and high, not all the way toward high, with a rack and a paper towel ready for the pies to drain on, using vegetable oil. To know when it is ready she drops in a scrap of leftover dough, and if it is not really sizzling it is not hot enough. Then the pies go in real easy, because the oil is very hot.
Her rule for the frying itself is slow but good and hot, since oil that is too hot browns them too fast before the dough has time to cook. She flips them with forks and takes them out at a light golden brown, and says she will add a little cinnamon and sugar on top once they come out. Each one gets held above the skillet a moment to let the oil drip off before it goes on the rack. She also notices that the later pies brown faster once the oil has been going, so she cuts the heat down a hair.
What she ends up with
The last two pies come out of the filling exactly: she says they used every drop of the canned apples, and that it is a lot of work but worth it in the end. She stacks them crisscross on a plate, as high as they will go. She does not count the finished pies on camera.
For canning and preserving, follow Lynn's video together with current tested guidance from your national or state extension service.