Monday 25 July 2011

Liz's apple pie









Ok, I'll try my best to describe her recipe. She wasn't very accurate with the mesuraments. Here we go:

350 gr flour
75 g margarine (feel free to use unsalted butter)
2 cooking apples2 large handfuls of sugar1 splash of water
1 pinch of salt

 Pre-heat oven to 200C. Cut apples into small chunks and cook them with a bit of water and sugar until they are soft, but not mushy.

Meanwhile put the flour and salt in a large bowl and add the margarine. Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour until you have a mixture that resembles coarse breadcrumbs with no large lumps of butter remaining. Lift it up high and let it fall back down into the bowl, which means that air is being incorporated all the time, that is what makes pastry light.

Using a knife, stir in just enough of the cold water to bind the dough together. I always thought a good shortcrust pastry should be made with iced-cold water and let it rest in the fridge for a while. You thought that too, don't you? She didn't bother!

 Take half of the dough and  on a floured surface and roll it out with the roller pin as thin as possible and transfer to a 18 cm pie tin. Fill it with the apple.

Roll out the other half of the dough for the pie lid, trim the excess dough and press the edges all around with your fingers. Make some cuts in the middle of the pie so the apples can steam away. Decorate as you like and brush the top of the pastry with milk.

Place the pie dish into the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes. Remove it from the oven and sprinkle with granulated sugar. Put it back for 3 more minutes and it's done!

I was sure we were going to eat uncooked pastry, but we didn't!!

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