The Sneaky Magpie

One of the reasons we bought this house was the mature apple tree in the garden. The tree is right in the middle casting huge shadow on the lawn. We have a swing hanging off one of its branches and on a hot day it is a delight to sit underneath on the grass to escape the burning sun.

The tree produced a huge amount of fruit this year, at some point I was making a large pot of apple sauce every day but it all came to an end. I also made a lot of apple pies, they are so easy to make and so delicious with some cream, custard or served warm with vanilla ice cream.  A slice of apple pie was my favorite treat when I used to live in Holland and believe me, the Dutch are masters at making it. They spice it with cinnamon, add raisins and even pistachios. They serve it with whipped cream. It is best when accompanied by coffee verkeerd and a couple of magazines in a brown café.

I tried to recreate the cake last year but it wasn’t the same. I decided that I will never make it as it should be so a simple pastry case with apple-y goodness inside will be my go-to recipe.

Apple pie

Pastry:

125g butter

100g icing sugar

a pinch of salt

225g plain flour

zest of 1/2 lemon

2 large egg yolks

2 tbsp cold milk

Cream butter, salt and sugar, rub in the flour, lemon zest and egg yolks till it looks like bread crumbs, add the cold milk and combine . Wrap it in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 1h. Yep, same recipe as the frangipane tarts but halved.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease a pie tin.

Filling:

7 apples, mine are (I think) a cox kind

a knob of butter

2 tbsp sugar – depends on what apples you use so taste it please

1 tsp ground cinnamon

a handful of raisins

a handful of pistachios

Slice apples into small slices, put in a pan with a dash of water and the butter, sugar and cinnamon. Cook for about 15 minutes, the apples should keep their shape but be soft. Add raisins and pistachios. Leave to cool.

Roll out your pastry and line the pie tin. Put the apples inside and with the remaining pastry either cover the whole pie and make a hole or, like me, make strips and cross them. Make sure the ends are pinched together. Give the pie an egg wash and a sprinkling of sugar. Bake for 45min-1h or until the top is golden brown.

NB. If you fancy, take few apple halves, peel and core them and slice them thinly but not completely so they keep together and put them on the top underneath the strips.

NNB. If you are ever in Amsterdam the best apple pie is at Café Winkel. What you want is appeltaart met slaagroom.  

 

Tags: Apple Pie, Cafe Winkel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 at 5:10 am and is filed under Food, recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.