Double Apple Pie, Nigella Lawson, How to be a Domestic Goddess

I had always been intrigued by Nigella's Double Apple Pie but never got round to making it because the thought of peeling and coring all that apples just did not seem like a very good use of my time. But with my brother recently back home for the vacation, I decided to take advantage of his enthusiasm to finally make this pie.

Firstly, I'm not very good at pastries. In fact, I suck at it and had real trouble with this one. I just couldn't get it to roll out properly. I was wondering if it had anything to do with the recipe, but I googled it and found that no one else had my problem. I guess as with all things, practice makes perfect, and I will be practising more. She does make it up in the food processor, as opposed to by hand. Perhaps next time I'll try the traditional method. It could be easier. Anyway, back to the pie.

The recipe calls for two different types of apples, hence the "double" element of the pie (no, it's not referring to the size, though it is a rather big pie, and it's baked in a Springform tin). I can't find Bramleys or Coxes here in Singapore, so I used Granny Smiths (for the green Bramleys) and Fuji apples (for the red Coxes). The green apples were to be mashed, and the red ones were to be chunky.

The shortcrust pastry is slightly different from regular shortcrust patries, in that it uses Cheddar in the mix. It may sound weird, but they actually go so well together. I recall as a little girl, I loved eating cheese with apples - in fact that was the only way my mum could get me to eat cheese.

I really enjoyed the pie. It was a very substantial and sliceable pie. It was great when fresh and hot out of the oven. When it cooled, I thought the pastry was a bit tough (my fault), but the filling was great, especially since the apples were of different sizes and textures. My husband, surprisingly, loved the pastry, but wasn't so keen on the filling because he thought the apples were too chunky. I guess he likes them small a la MacDonald Apple Pie. I would love to make these again, but now that my brother has gone back to school, it might be awhile...

Apple Pie

After a wonderful tete-a-tete with my weighing machine, I had resolved to take a break from the wonderful world of baking. But my resolve didn't last long. I was reading Jamie Oliver's Family Dinners, and was drawn to the apple pie recipe like bees to honey. I tried to resist. But the picture of the half-eaten golden yellow apple pie in the book dominated my thoughts. All I could think of was apple pie. Even cinnamon would invade my thoughts (even though the recipe doesn't call for any cinnamon).

Finally, I caved in. Afterall, I rationalised, apple pie contains apples, and we are supposed to get our daily apple right? =)

So off I went baking again.

Apple pie is a whole new territory. I have never baked a pie, though I have often thought of it. I think I might have made some shortcrust pastry in Home Economics classes a long time ago, but I forget. The pastry appeared easy enough to make. All I needed to do was to dump the ingredients in the food processor and blitz.

However, the rolling it out and laying it in the tin showed up my inexperience. My dough was rather crumbly and kept tearing when I tried peeling it off the board, which I had liberally dusted with flour. Perhaps the humidity in Singapore (and the really hot few weeks we've been having) doesn't help. Of course, the fact that my pie dish was 9 inches rather than 8 inches, as required by the recipe, made it worse, as I had to roll the pastry out even thinner. But Mr. Oliver says it's OK if "it tears or breaks - just patch it up - as it will look nice and rustic". So I patched up as best I could, as my confidence was rapidly melting.

The second part of the recipe involved peeling and chopping the apples and cooking them into a saucepan with the rest of the filling ingredients (sugar, ground ginger, zest of lemon, sultanas). The recipe called for Bramley and Cox apples, but they aren't readily available here (if at all), so I substituted Granny Smiths for the Bramleys and Red Delicious and Gala for the Coxes. I also used regular brown sugar instead of the fancy muscovado/ demerara sugar.

As expected, I had a tough time getting the dough to fit the top of the pie. Witness the number of tears in the pastry. Also the pastry rim was very very thin.

The result was a not very nice looking pie. The pastry was a bit overdone and burnt at the edges because the pastry was thin, and I had failed to adjust the cooking time accordingly. But I was hopeful, because, the smells emanating from my oven were just heavenly!

I spooned out some pie, dolloped some custard on it and dug in. Oh my, it was good pie. It wasn't at all heavy. Not too sweet, either. It was almost perfect. For the next slice, I took out a tub of Ben and Jerry's Vanilla ice-cream and attacked. Ah, now, perfect...