Gotta love a good ole’ apple pie. đŸ™‚ Sunday evenings watching a movie under the blanket with a pie and ice-cream, complete with a nice cuppa. Life!
Today I was feeling a tad random and so I thought I would try my hands at baking a pie. This is the second time I’ve made apple pie and whilst I still made some mistakes this time round, It’s still leaps better than my previous attempt.
I used a recipe from the carnaldish site which has a full list of ingredients and the instructions. Now I’m going to admit and say that I DID cheat, by using pre-made pastry from Jus Rol. I didn’t have the resources to make it from scratch this time!
Ingredients (From CarnalDish.Com):
Â
20 cm /2 inch deep pie dish. I didn’t have a pie dish available so what you see is a 20 cm cake tin. đŸ™‚
2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (12 1/2 ounces), plus more for work surface
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 16 tbsp unsalted butter (2 sticks), cold, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
- 3 tbsp sour cream
- 1/3 cup ice water, or more if needed
For the apple filling:
- 2 pounds Granny Smith apples (4 medium)
- 2 pounds McIntosh apples (4 medium)
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
- pinch of salt
- 1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/8 tsp ground allspice
- 1 to 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 egg white, beaten lightly
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar, for topping
So first thing’s first. Apples. And quite a few of ’em. Apple pies are normally made with green apples, but I decided to chuck in some red ones as I don’t like the tart taste of an all-green pie. Here we have four green cooking apples and four Braeburn apples. Wash them, core them and slice them into pieces, depending on how you like it.
Coat the apples with the cinnamon, allspice, lemon juice, sugar and a hint of salt which brings out all the flavours. Then what you’re going to want to do (and this is a critical step) is to put the apples in a colander or sieve and leave the apples to “sweat” or drain out the extra fluid for about 30-50 minutes. The sugar helps release the juice from the apple and this is important as it is that juice that makes an apple pie crust all wet and soggy when put in the oven, we don’t want that.
The above pic is the amount of juice collected after 30 mins. All that sweetness! We’re not throwing it away though. Put that shit in the microwave for around 3 minutes or until it starts to turn into a syrup. Leave it aside.
Back to the apples; before throwing the apples into the pie, add two spoonfuls of cornflour and mix evenly. This will make the mixture all thick and syrupy while it’s cooking.
——————
WHILE ALL THIS IS HAPPENING, YOUR PASTRY DOUGH SHOULD BE CHILLING IN THE FRIDGE.
——————–
If you’re lazy like me and choose to use pre-made pastry, roll out the pastry first and put it in the fridge while all the above is going on. You’ll be needed two lumps of pastry; one for the base and one for the cover or lattice as I’ve used above.
If you want to make the dough from scratch, process the flour, salt, and sugar together in food processor until combined, about 3 seconds. Add butter and pulse until butter is size of large peas, about ten 1-second pulses. Take that dough out and roll it out.
Toss them shits in the pie base. Now..remember the leftover apple syrup from earlier? Pour it on various areas of the apples. This will give the pie flavour with none of the excess moisture.
At this point, you can either choose to roll out the pastry crust and lay it over the top or you can choose to be fancy like I did and produce a Lattice crust as illustrated below.
Cut the rolled out dough into 1.5cm strips as so.( I did this all free-hand. No ruler needed. You know why? Because left-handed people RULE.)
Put the first layer of strips on the pie, then flip back two of the strips and add a horizontal strip and repeat. I’ll be honest and say I made the above photo as I really didn’t know how to explain this part. However it’s incredibly simple to do! This site explains how to do it perfectly.
 Trim and secure the edges with your fingers or a fork. Doesn’t it look pretty? Brush the top with an egg wash and sprinkle some sugar on the top, Bung it in the oven (on the low rack) for an hour at gas mark 7. After 20 minutes or so, bring the gas mark down to 5.
Taa Daa! A few mistakes were made along the way, but it tastes fricking amazing anyway!! Please have a try and let me know how it comes out. Meanwhile, I’m going downstairs for another slice.
Oh wow this looks amazing! x
Oh yum this looks delicious! I love fruit based desserts during the summer months, especially homemade apple pie :). xx
Almost Delightful
Now this would go perfectly with custard or ice cream after a nice Sunday roast.
xoxo
Ivy
p.s I have a giveaway to win £50 vouchers to spend on Africas Runway. Details on