An all time favorite, this simple and tasty apple pie dessert takes only a dollop of vanilla ice cream to make it an out- of- this- world experience.
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Today, apple pie is assumed to be an American dish but, with due respect to finer emotions on its taste, the apple pie is a European dish. Traditionally, (way back in the fourteenth century), the British enjoyed meat pies and that was what encouraged their cooks to start substituting meat with apples to make a dessert. With political ups and downs during the reign of Cromwell, then King Charles II, the apple pie also saw waxing and waning fortunes. However, apple pie was a favorite dessert during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Other European countries also liked the dish, and there is literary evidence of Sweden baking apple pies in 1796, "Apple-pie was used all the year, the evening meal of children. House-pie, in country places is make of apples neither peeled nor freed from the cores, and its crust is not broken if a agon-wheel goes over it…."
Passing from the British kitchens to colonial hands, the apple-pie was originally baked with its crust off, to facilitate the adding of sugar and spices after the dish was baked. Sometimes the crust was even baked separately.
By the eighteenth century, the apple pie was a hot favorite in the United States, but disdain for its English parentage did not go away in a hurry. Mark Twain, the famous nineteenth century writer expressed his feelings for the apple pie of England in these words (in 1878) :
RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE - To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as follows:
Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature. Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples; aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron; add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies. Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.
For us lesser mortals, the all time favorite Apple Pie can be made in a much more gourmet friendly manner, which may not give Mark Twain any reason to complain.
For this recipe you need:
1 kilogram cooking apples
¼ cup plain flour
½ cup ground sugar
1and ½ tsp lemon juice
½ tsp cinnamon powder (fresh or freshly ground)
½ tsp allspice powder
¼ tsp nutmeg powder
¼ tsp ginger powder (or crushed ginger)
4 tbsp diced butter (unsalted, softened)
(If you can get pastry strips ready to cook, it’s great, or else, make the pastry with the following ingredients:
2 cups plain flour
6 tbsp cold butter diced
4 tbsp cold lard diced
1 tsp salt.
To make pastry, sift salt and four together. Then add the butter and lard and rub into the flour to make coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in a little ice water to just bind the crumbs into dough. Divide the dough into two balls, warp in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for about half an hour. These will serve as the pastry shell and the crust respectively)
Roll out one dough into a round, 9 inches in diameter and then transfer this into a 23 cm (9 inch) pie tin. Trim or shape the edges as you desire and preheat this tin at about 220 degrees centigrade.
In the meantime peel, core and chop the apples, mix in all the spices, spoon into the pie shell, and drizzle butter on top. Roll out the second dough ball and cover the pie with this crust sheet, press onto the dish edges and crimp.
Decorations can be made with the flour figures (usually leaf shapes) and arranged onto the top dough sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes at 220 degrees C, then reduce heat to 180 degrees and bake for a further 45 minutes, till a healthy golden brown spreads on the crust.
The apple pie can be enjoyed A La Mode (with vanilla ice cream) or just as it is
Other European countries also liked the dish, and there is literary evidence of Sweden baking apple pies in 1796, "Apple-pie was used all the year, the evening meal of children. House-pie, in country places is make of apples neither peeled nor freed from the cores, and its crust is not broken if a agon-wheel goes over it…."
Passing from the British kitchens to colonial hands, the apple-pie was originally baked with its crust off, to facilitate the adding of sugar and spices after the dish was baked. Sometimes the crust was even baked separately.
By the eighteenth century, the apple pie was a hot favorite in the United States, but disdain for its English parentage did not go away in a hurry. Mark Twain, the famous nineteenth century writer expressed his feelings for the apple pie of England in these words (in 1878) :
RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE - To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as follows:
Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature. Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples; aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron; add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies. Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.
For us lesser mortals, the all time favorite Apple Pie can be made in a much more gourmet friendly manner, which may not give Mark Twain any reason to complain.
For this recipe you need:
1 kilogram cooking apples
¼ cup plain flour
½ cup ground sugar
1and ½ tsp lemon juice
½ tsp cinnamon powder (fresh or freshly ground)
½ tsp allspice powder
¼ tsp nutmeg powder
¼ tsp ginger powder (or crushed ginger)
4 tbsp diced butter (unsalted, softened)
(If you can get pastry strips ready to cook, it’s great, or else, make the pastry with the following ingredients:
2 cups plain flour
6 tbsp cold butter diced
4 tbsp cold lard diced
1 tsp salt.
To make pastry, sift salt and four together. Then add the butter and lard and rub into the flour to make coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in a little ice water to just bind the crumbs into dough. Divide the dough into two balls, warp in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for about half an hour. These will serve as the pastry shell and the crust respectively)
Roll out one dough into a round, 9 inches in diameter and then transfer this into a 23 cm (9 inch) pie tin. Trim or shape the edges as you desire and preheat this tin at about 220 degrees centigrade.
In the meantime peel, core and chop the apples, mix in all the spices, spoon into the pie shell, and drizzle butter on top. Roll out the second dough ball and cover the pie with this crust sheet, press onto the dish edges and crimp.
Decorations can be made with the flour figures (usually leaf shapes) and arranged onto the top dough sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes at 220 degrees C, then reduce heat to 180 degrees and bake for a further 45 minutes, till a healthy golden brown spreads on the crust.
The apple pie can be enjoyed A La Mode (with vanilla ice cream) or just as it is
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