The Core Facts

Overall verdict: I loved this pie. The apple consistency was perfect and the cinnamon gave it a kick.
Timings: 20 minutes to prepare + 1 hour to chill pastry + 45 mins in oven
Sugar: 195g in total
Butter: 225g
Type of apple: Bramleys

The Long Peel

I picked a Clodagh McKenna apple pie recipe for my very first bake of this project. Why? Three reasons: First, I firmly believe that Ireland produces the best apple pies/tarts (although the whole point of this blog is to see if I’m right, so hold that thought for now). Two, Clodagh’s recipe looked very simple, which meant I was unlikely to mess up my first attempt. Three, she specifies Bramley apples, which is what I had to hand.

The Pastry

I’m not a baking expert but I thought I knew how to make pastry. Turns out there’s another way: Clodagh’s instructions are to cream the butter and sugar together first and then add the eggs and flour later on. It was more like making a cake mixture. (I later discovered that this is pate sucrée, which is used for sweet tarts. Pâte sablée, which is shortcrust pastry in English, uses the ‘rubbing in’ method for flour and butter while pâte brisée also used the rubbing in method but is used for savoury tarts. So there you go – I’ve already learned something new.)

I followed the instructions to the letter thinking ‘this will never work – it’s way too sticky’ until it actually did work very nicely, just as Clodagh predicted. She suggests “at least” an hour for chilling the pastry in the fridge – I gave it literally 60 minutes and not a second more.

I knew I hadn’t done a good job of rolling out the pastry because I had a lot left over. As it was, the base turned out OK – it could have been a bit thicker. The top layer was definitely too thin though, as you can see in the picture below. I was probably lucky that only one small tear appeared during its time in the oven.

The Apples

Clodagh specifies Bramley apples for this recipe, and she asks for them to be diced. I could have been a bit neater, as some of my apple pieces were still a bit chunky, but it worked – they softened nicely in the oven while retaining a tiny bit of bite.

For coating the apple, Clodagh adds a teaspoon of cinnamon on top of the apple. If I was making this again, I’d probably toss the apple in the cinnamon as I’m not sure it got distributed very evenly. She also puts 140g of sugar on top of the apple. That felt like a lot of sugar but the end product tasted great so who am I to argue.

The Bake

Clodagh says 45 minutes to an hour. I went for 45 minutes as my eggwash wasn’t very even and bits of it looked overdone. But 45 minutes was actually fine.

The Dish

I was a bit confused by Clodagh’s tin measurements of 18cm x 30.5cm x 2.5cm, as all of my pie dishes are round. It didn’t matter though, as I’ve decided to use the same dish for all of my bakes. This is mainly for consistency reasons but I also want to avoid ending up with 80 different tins in the cupboard. I used a 23cm pie dish that is around 4cm deep.

The Hot Slice

I cut a slice straight from the oven and was pleased to see the apple had mushed up very nicely. There was a lot of juice though and I was worried that my pastry base wasn’t thick enough to hold it.

The Rested Result

The next day, I cut the pie it in half and was pleased to see the base holding up well:

If We Repeeled

• I’d coat the apple in the cinnamon and sugar for a more even distribution
• The pastry needed to be thicker – mine was too thin
• Don’t rush the eggwash – mine was messy

Scores

Simplicity of bake: Fairly simple
Pastry texture: Soft and a little chewy
Pastry taste: Buttery and quite sweet
Apple texture: Really soft with a tiny bit of bite
Apple taste: The cinnamon gives it a kick and the sugar adds a syrupy consistency.
Apple to pastry ratio: Possibly needed a lot more apple and a bit more pastry
Overall score: 8 out of 10