Apple pie

Parita put up her recipe for apple pie recently. It made me root through my drafts and dig out mine. I had made this last winter (!) and dint post it for reasons unknown. Actually the reasons, or rather the reason is know and shall be revealed soon.

I made one serving of the pie and here is the recipe for it.

Ingredients:

For the crust

• 100 gms maida
• 50 gms cold butter
• A pinch of baking power
• A pinch of salt
• Ice cold water to bind

For the filling

• 1 ½ a apples, peeled ,cored and chopped into pieces
• 2 tbsp sugar
• ¼ tsp cinnamon powder
• A few drops of lemon juice

Method:

• Mix together the maida, salt and baking powder in a bowl.
• Using your finger tips rub in the cold butter till it resembles bread crumbs. With ice cold water and bind it all together gently to make a dough. Cover with a wet cloth and refrigerate for half an hour or so.
• Remove dough from fridge, keeping aside about ¼ th of the dough,  roll the remaining on a well dusted working surface to an even thickness. Gently life and place it in the baking dish ensuring all side are properly covered. Roll a rolling pin lightly on the edge of your baking dish to cut away the superfluous dough.
• Prick the base of the pie case before putting it in the oven and baking it at 180 deg. C for about 15 minutes(till its light brown in colour). Remove from oven and cool.
• Sprinkle the cinnamon powder and sugar and lemon juice over the cut apple pieces. Using your finger tips mix well and ensure all pieces are well covered with sugar and cinnamon.
• Place the pieces in the pie case in two or three layers. Keep aside.
• Use the dough that had been kept  aside to make the top cover of the pie.  Roll it out and cut it into strips and place these in a criss cross manner over the apple-filled pie. Alternately cut interesting shapes from the dough and use these to cover the apples.
• To bake the top crust, place the pie in an oven and bake at 180 deg.C for about 15 mins.
• Serve hot or cold. I like it hot!

Notes: I had made the effort of preparing and blogging about the apple pie long back when I dint have this baking blog. I have used the same recipe this time around. The only difference  between then and now is that with all the baking practice, I am much faster at it than I used to be! I liked the end result of the pie but my mother wasnt very enthusiastic about it. As it turns out, she likes a lot of apple in her pie. Now if you chop your apples into pieces, they arent really going to fill your pie up with so much apples (no matter how well you pack them in) that you taste more apple than pie crust when you take a bite. So her verdict was that the pie was ok enough but didnt have the amount of apple she thought was necessary.  I think this is nature’s way of getting even with me. As a child I always complained to my mother that her aloo paranthas werent stuffed with enough aloos. I wanted there to be a burst of aloo in each morcel I ate. Friend who ate my tiffin at school considered the parathas just fine. That could be an explanation as to why they busied themselves in polish off my parathas while I cribbed and fussed and ate very little.  My mother tried to explain to me  on numerous occassions that there is only so much potato you can stuff in the paratha before it becomes un-rollable. I continued sulking nevertheless.

Now its my mother’s turn to say the “stuffing isnt enough.” She hinted  I might want to grate the apples and add them to the pie in that form. You can add more apple than way. But I wasnt too sure of thats a good idea. Wont the apples release juice and the pie get all soggy? It was on my agenda to try a tiny pie with grated apple so I could be a compare-n-contrast type of post. The grated apple pie never happened and thats why the apple pie post never got published. As things stand right now apples cost a bomb in the market. There is   no way I am going to buy a dozen to grate and cook them! Version -2 of the pie is just going to have to wait till winter. Meanwhile, if you have ever used grated apples in your pie, be  kind and share your experience with me- disasters, successes, whatever.