Super Custom Crafting

I have a weird question :) Can I make a player have to use more than 9 items in a crafting table when making a datapack? For example 🍎 , 🍎, 🍎, 🍎, 16 Golden Apples, 🍎 🍎, 🍎, 🍎 Sorry is this is a dumb question [| :) Should I look to crafting or some other method like smelting or some other method of recognizing golden apples. My idea is along the lines of: If you trade in a stack of golden apples you get a diamond :)