August 23, 2018
Although many plants such as potatoes and tomatoes have been damaged pretty badly by the humid summer this year, apples seem to be loving it. The most traditional way of fruit preservation has been to slice them up and dry them afterwards, although cooking them in some sort of a jam has become an even more popular method of fruit preservation today.
Apples can be used fresh for strudel or pie fillings, however we decided to use them cooked for this week’s recipe. The process follows several stages that together sound like a medieval death sentence, as unpeeled (organic) apples were cored, grated, blended, cooked, poured into jars and left to rest. Two days after and today we are using one of those jars to make our apple pie.
The main concern when making the filling is to get rid of as much of the liquid as possible, as we’d like to prevent the bottom of the pie turning into porridge. There are several methods that help prevent this, the most important one being that the bottom dough be baked for 10 to 15 minutes before the filling and the top dough layer are added. Raisins and bread crumbs also proved to be very helpful in this regard.
So, here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
Stir baking powder into the flour and kneed the butter in as evenly as possible. Then add the remaining ingredients.
We were lucky to have some hazelnuts, so after break the shells we chopped them up and added them to the dough as well.
We let the dough rest in the fridge while preparing the filling. We had grated, blended and cooked our apples some days before, letting them rest in a jar, so all we needed to add were raisins (washed thoroughly before use), sugar, cinnamon, lemon zest and bread crumbs. The mixture can be heated up so that it’s hot when spread over the bottom layer of the dough.
Take half of the dough out of the fridge and spread it on the bottom of the baking tray. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius and bake for about 10-15 minutes.
Take it out and spread the apple mixture on the top of the semi-baked pie bottom. Roll the second part of the dough into 1 -1.5 cm long strips and place them on the top to form a net.
Bake for another half an hour or until the dough starts turning slightly brown.
Take it out when it’s done, cool it down a bit then cover the top with some powdered sugar to make it irresistible, especially when the kitchen still smells of cinnamon, apple and baking.
Dober tek!
