Mini Apple Pie

Pie, Glorious Pie! This delicious pie pastry is packed full with scrumptious and flavourful baked apples.

One of my biggest baking dilemma is I live in a household of two people, so making a large amount of food are often not practical, unless if packing on weight is not already a problem for us. :) This recipe makes a decent 15 cm small apple pie that serves four (three for me, one for my husband). If you want to make a bigger pie, simply double the recipe and bake them on a larger dish with a longer baking time.

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Pate Brisée

Equipment: Rolling pin, 15 cm x 5.5 cm depth pie dish/ foil

Yield: 1 small Pie

100 g Cold Butter (Cut in to cubes) Unsalted

200 g Plain Flour

2 g Salt

20 g Yolks

35 g Iced water

Apple Fillings

1 Juice of Lemon + 1 Tbs. water

2 Granny smith apples (peeled and slice to 1 cm segments

1 Large Royal Gala - peeled and segment

1/2 tsp Nutmeg Powder

½ tsp Clove Powder

1 tbs Cinnamon Powder

120 g Caster Sugar

50 g Light Brown Sugar

30 g Unsalted Butter

pinch Salt

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Method:

1. Cut cold butter into cubes (around 15mm/1.5 cm).

2. Rub cold butter cubes with flour and salt with the tip of the fingers. The mixture should be crumbly with still some lumps of butter in the mix.

3. Stir egg yolks with iced cold water together.

4. Gradually add in yolks mix into the flour and mix with a fork or with your palm until when you press the flour mix between your hands, they clump together into a dough. Add more liquid if the dough feels dry. You do not necessarily need all the liquid. Depending on the humidity on the day, amount of liquid required varies.

5. Transfer the dough on to a floured bench and gently knead until they just come together. (Do not over knead, the dough should still have bits of butter pieces visible in them).

6. Cut the dough in to half, stack them on top of one another and gently press down. Repeat this process 3 times. If dough becomes too soft, wrap and leave it fridge to cool before proceeding. This process gives a very flaky result. It is very similar to the concept of lamination. (Check out my post about dough lamination)

7. Wrap the two dough with cling film and leave in fridge to rest for at least 2 hours or overnight.

8. When the pastry have chilled, bring them out to room temperature until soft enough to roll.

9. Roll the pasty to roughly about 0.5cm/5mm thick ensuring that the pastry is rolled out as round as possible leaving approximalte 5 mm excess around the rim

(Note: if you are decorating lattice on top rather than covering the whole top of your pie with pastry, having the excess is not necessary. Instead, you will trim off the excess level with the rim.

For the Apple Filling

1. Prepare the Lemon Water. Peel all apples and slice them in to 10 mm/1 cm slices, ensuring to trim off the cores.

Note: If you are peeling the apples all at once before slicing, place them in the lemon water to avoid the apples from browning. The same goes for the sliced apples.

2. Mix the castor sugar, brown sugar, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and butter into a saucepan over medium heat and gently melt the sugar being careful not to burn the mixture. .

3. Once the sugars are semi melted, add in the cut apples and stir over low heat to cook the apples partially for approximately 2 to 3 minutes. The apple should still be firm to touch and only slightly softened. Baking in the oven will cook the apples further.

4. Strain the apple slices from the sugar syrup and set aside to cool until ready to assemble. Reserve the leftover syrup in the pan.

Apple Caramel sauce

With the leftover apple syrup, whisk in one table spoon of corn starch and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes. Set aside until ready to use.

Note: Do not over cook the syrup, it will thicken as it cools.

Assembly

Pre heat the oven to 170C

Remove the pastry from the fridge and leave at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes until it is soft enough to roll out.

With the help of a rolling pin, roll the dough out to approximately 5 mm thick and large enough to fit in to the tin . Line the tin with the pastry and trim the edges leaving 3mm excess on the rim.

Fill the pastry with the cooked apples drizzle 3 to 4 big spoonful of the apple caramel sauce on top of the apples. The rest of the apple caramel can be reserved in a jar to be served with ice creams or other purposes.

With the excess dough roll it out to the same thickness again and large enough to cover the top. Place the excess dough on top to cover the top of the pie. Trim the excess leaving approximately 5 mm excess to seal. Brush some water on the wides of the bottom pastry before placing the top pastry.

Pinch the edge of the base pastry with the top to avoid leaving. Lightly spray the top of the pastry with some water then generously sprinkle some demerara or light brown sugar. Puncture a few holes in the center and sides of the pastry top then bake in the pre heated oven for 45 minutes to an hour until a golden crust are achieved.