Cooking and baking my way out of a Facebook addiction....Day 3

Apple Pie! This is another recipe I used last Fall as a result of excess apples. This was the 1st time I've made it since then and I tweaked it a bit. 1st I have to confess that I've never made a homemade pie crust...my grandmothers would shake their heads a bit if they knew. But the refrigerator pie crusts are so great and so easy to use. And hey, really before this I made very very few pies so this is great progress for me!
Again I started with another recipe I found on Allrecipes.com, and a very popular one at that with over 4,00 reviews. Here's the recipe as listed on Allrecipes.com (my individual changes are listed below that):

Apple Pie by Grandma Ople (and now by me with my changes!)

Ingredients
1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
8 Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and sliced

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour to form a paste. Add water, white sugar and brown sugar, and bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and let simmer.
2. Place the bottom crust in your pan. Fill with apples, mounded slightly. Cover with a lattice work crust. Gently pour the sugar and butter liquid over the crust. Pour slowly so that it does not run off.
3. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes, until apples are soft.

My changes this time around included:

• This was the 1st time I used Granny Smith apples which is now a new must! But I only needed 5 small apples...I can't imagine ever needing 8 like the recipe calls for.
• To the lovely caramel syrup mixture on the stove, I added about 1/3 of a teaspoon of cinnamon. I don't like strong cinnamon flavor but this gave it a nice and noticeable hint. And I also added 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla to this mixture.
• I also added about a 1/2 a tablespoon or less of corn starch to help thicken up the syrup just a bit as it is quite runny...some reviews added more to make it much much thicker.
• Oh and I also created my lattice pie crust top on a piece of wax paper before starting the whole process so that it was ready to go when the pie was all assembled.  And I also brush egg whites on the bottom crust before putting in the apples to help keep it from gettins soggy (so they say :).
•   I usually have some of the syrup left over so I don't have to worry about overflow (but I'm still chicken and put a pan under it so I don't destroy my oven.)