As English as apple pie...

The American's might use the phrase "as American as apple pie" a lot, but the apple pie predates the USA by quite a few centuries. Apparently, there's a printed apple pie recipe that dates back to 1381 (a quick Google turns it up easily, but the recipe itself isn't exactly very informative...). In any case, I'm a little ill, which means that I've not left the flat all day and so I've decided to bake! I got a gorgeous new pie dish for my birthday that I've yet to use, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity!

Apple Pie
Ingredients

• 180g Plain flour
• 85g Butter
• ~2tbsp Cold water
• 600g Braeburn apples
• 80g Caster sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Ground nutmeg

Method

1. Rub the flour and butter together until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
2. Add just enough cold water to form a dough.
3. Place the dough in a freezer bag and refrigerate for ~30 mins.
4. Roll out 2/3rds of the dough and line a pie dish.
5. Peel, core and chop the apples and mix with the sugar and spices.
6. Pour the apple mixture into the pastry-lined dish.
7. Moisten the crust of the pastry.
8. Roll out the remaining dough and place over the pie, pressing around the crust to seal.
9. Poke a hole in the top to let the steam escape and bake at 180C for ~45 mins.

Here's the pie at the end of step 6. It's rather a small pie dish, so it turns out that I had quite a bit of apple mixture left over. Well, at least no one can complain about my pie being underfilled though!

Ready for the oven. I would have crimped the edge, but I didn't leave myself enough overhang.

Straight out of the oven. Looking good...

And ready for eating!