A Cross Atlantic Classic

There’s a saying in the United States “As American as apple pie” but the roots of this pie lay firming in British soil. There are documented references to apple pies going back to the time of Chaucer. In one instance, a 1381 recipe lists the ingredients as good apples, good spices, figs, raisins and pears. The holding of the recipe being a casing of pastry, most probably not meant for eating though.

Here’s a shocking fact for you – during the mid 1600′s pies such as this were banned by Oliver Cromwell as they were seen as a source of too much pleasure. Apple Pie remains one of the most popular dessert pies today.

For me apple pie is a source of great memories, of visits to my Grandma and having a large slice of her still warm apple pie with double cream poured over, delicious. I don’t really remember eating any other kind of apple pie but hers during my childhood but it’s by no means a complaint, nothing could have stood close to hers anyway. Fond memories for me, even greater ones for my Dad, memories of childhood I suppose. Isn’t it great how food can inspire, provoke and stir up memories and emotions?

With a big bowl of apples, windfall from a kind friend who’s given me enough to keep me going for a long while and a mix of eating apples from my organic vegetable supplier, a pie could not be resisted for long.

So yesterday I decided to go ahead and make my Dad an apple pie, although in a slightly different style to my Grandma’s. A while back I watched an episode of Bake on UKTV Food where Rachel Allen and a pair of American home cooks baked one amazing looking pie, so I and headed straight to the book accompanying the series - Rachel’s Baking Secrets: From Cookies to Casseroles, Fresh from the Oven (Rachel Allen) but alas the recipe was not to be found.

Back to the drawing board for me, after a bit of searching through my ever growing cookbook ‘library’ I decided to combine a couple of recipe ideas and formulate something that way: creme fraiche pastry from Rachel’s Baking Secrets: From Cookies to Casseroles, Fresh from the Oven (Rachel Allen) and the spice mix idea from Jim Fobel’s Old-Fashioned Baking Book: Recipes from an American Childhood (Jim Fobel), which I hasten to add was an extremely kind gift from Vicky. The idea was simple, layers of apple interspersed with cinnamon scented sugar (and a wee bit of flour, recipe to be found at the end of the post) encased in rich, crumbly, crisp pastry.

I made the pie in a deep sided loose based cake tin rather than a pie dish as I wanted to be able to serve the pie ‘whole & unveiled’ with layers of apple throughout, stained pink by a little of the spiced apple jelly I made the other day.

Once out of the oven the pie was given a good dusting of cinnamon sugar, golden granulated sugar to be precise. Granulated sugar works better than caster or icing because of the size of the grain, its larger structure means it is less likely to melt into the pastry and that it will catch the light better and glimmer on serving (and in the photo, and that’s vital is it not?)

The pastry was utterly divine, so tender, crisp but crumbly and melt in the mouth too. I used home-made creme fraiche but store bought would of course work here perfectly well, do make your own at some point though, it’s so easy and it tastes oh so good. Using creme fraiche (or I suppose sour cream would work) makes for a much richer pastry, however  despite it’s richness actually tastes lighter than regular water or egg pastry.

There’s quite a lot of cinnamon in the apple pie but not so much that the flavour overpowers the delicate nature of the apples, in fact it compliments them perfectly. The apples soften up delightfully but retain a little shape and texture too.

I served the pie with double cream, in the manner my Grandma always did.

I have to say it was a resounding success, my Dad said he’d not tasted a pie like that since he was a kid, I took that as great praise – for my pie to be equal to my Grandma’s is a great, great honour, she taught me well

The Recipe:

The Pastry

• 500g pastry flour
• 250g chilled salted butter cut into cubes
• 100ml creme fraiche (plus or minus a couple of tablespoons depending)

1. Place the flour & butter in the bowl of a food processor and blitz until you have a ‘breadcrumb’ type mix.
2. Gradually add the creme fraiche until the pastry forms a dough and comes away from the sides of the bowl.
3. Remove from the bowl and combine lightly on a work surface dusted with icing sugar (tip when making sweet pastry always dust your work surface with icing sugar, it acts in the same way flour would but doesn’t toughen the dough as much and you get the added bonus of sweetening the pastry at the same time).
4. Roll the dough out to about 1cm thick circle and cut a quarter out, set the quarter aside and use the large piece to line your cake tin, overhanging edges are a good thing here. 
5. Place in the fridge to rest.

The Apples:

• 1kg apples, cooking and eating mixed in any proportion you like, peeled, cored and cut thinly (I used the food processor slicing disc for ease)
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 3 tablespoons plain flour
• 3 tablespoons spiced apple jelly (optional)

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. Take the pastry case out of the fridge and scatter a handful of the sugar mix over the base.
3. Scatter a layer of apples in the base and scatter with more sugar mix.
4. Repeat until all the apples/sugar are used, making sure the pie domes in the centre, and dot with the apple jelly if using. 
5. Roll out the remaining pastry to make a lid and cover the pie, fold back the overhanging edges and use to crimp an edge to the pie.
6. Bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 20 minutes then reduce the temperature to 160C and bake for another 30 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack, allow to cool fully before removing from the tin. 
8. NB. If you wish to serve the pie warm, remove from the tin and wrap in aluminium foil before placing in a 180C oven for around 10 minutes to warm through. Serve with cream, custard or ice cream.