Apple Pie | Perfect Recipe

Sometimes you just want a good old-fashioned traditional Bramley apple pie, the perfect apple pie …

The Perfect Apple Pie Recipe

Serves 6. Use a 1.2 litre pie dish with a wide rim. We recommend using a ‘golden’ caster sugar for this recipe.

Recipe Ingredients:

Pie Filling

• 700g Bramley cooking apples (peeled, cored and sliced)
• 170g golden caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp ground cinnamon (to taste)
• 2 tbsp cornflour

Sweet shortcrust pastry

• 440g plain flour, plus extra for rolling
• 270g butter (softened and cut into cubes)
• 3 tbsp golden caster sugar
• finely grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1 egg (beaten)
• 2 tbsp cold water

• beaten egg yolk (to glaze)
• 1 tbsp golden caster sugar (to glaze)

Sugar syrup

• 2 tbsp sugar melted in a pan with 2 tbsp of water

Recipe Method:

To make the pastry: sift the flour, and add the sugar and lemon zest into a bowl and rub in the softened butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the beaten egg and cold water and stir until the dough is silky and smooth. Add more flour or water if it needs it. Divide the dough into two-thirds for the base and one-third for the pie lid. Gently knead and roll each pastry piece into a ball and flatten slightly. Cover them and put in the fridge for twenty minutes to chill.

When chilled roll out the larger ball of pastry on a lightly floured surface until it is about 7mm thick. The pastry should be able to overhang the 1.2 litre pie dish (greased with butter) by about 2cm. Lift the pastry up over the dish using the rolling pin and drop it gently onto the pie dish, covering it. Press the pastry firmly into the dish and up the sides. Put the dish in the fridge to chill for ten minutes.

For the pie filling: Mix the sugar, cinnamon and cornflour in a large bowl. Add as much ground cinnamon as you prefer – 1 tsp will give a more intense flavour than 1/2 tsp. Peel, quarter and core the apples, then slice them thinly and add them to the spiced sugar. Toss them well together to coat.

Preheat the oven to 200°C

Take the pie dish out of the fridge, place it on a baking tray. Spoon the apple filling into the pie dish, making sure that it is full and the apples rise and bulge above the top edge slightly. Make sure you also scrape all the sugary juices out of the bowl and spoon them over.

Brush the rim of the pasty in the dish with a little beaten egg yolk.

Roll out the reserved ball of pastry in the same way as the first. This is for the apple pie lid and so it should be just larger than the dish. Use the rolling pin to lift the pastry and roll it over the top of the pie and over the bulging apple filling. Using a sharp knife, trim off the excess pastry, then gently crimp all around the edge with the back of a fork to seal the pie fully. Make a few small holes in the centre of  the pie with the tip of a knife (as a steam holes).

Regather all the excess pastry dough – lightly knead the pastry trimmings and re-roll this out to a few millimetres in thickness. Using a pastry cutter and cut out leaf shapes. Place them all around the edge of the pie, slightly overlapping each other, in a garland.

Glaze the top of the apple pie with the beaten egg yolk and sprinkle over the top of the pie with a little extra golden caster sugar (and optionally a little ground cinnamon).

Bake in the centre of the oven for 45 to 55 minutes at 200C or until the pie is golden brown all over, and the apples are tender. If the pie crust starts to get too brown, cover with foil for the remainder of the cooking time. With ten minutes to go remove the pie from the oven brush over the top with some sugar syrup and put back in the oven to finish off.

This Perfect Apple Pie can be served hot or col. Serve hot with either some vanilla custard or some vanilla ice-cream.