The Core Facts

Overall verdict: Unfortunately, this one was a dud for me. It was complicated to make and the end result was heavy – both the pastry and the apple were stodgy. It looked quite nice though.
Timings: 30 mins prep + 40 mins for baking (I extended the bake to 50 mins)
Sugar: 350g
Butter: 250g
Type of apple: Bramley

The Long Peel

I’d been on a bit of a roll, with four really successful Irish apple tart recipe bakes behind me before I got to Richard Corrigan’s Irish apple tart recipe. This one just proves that not every recipe works for everyone. It was complicated and time-consuming and then the finished product seemed to miss the mark in every area.

The Pastry

Richard suggests making the pastry in a food processor. I followed his advice but my food processor wasn’t big enough for 500g of flour plus the butter, eggs and sugar as well, so I had to do two batches of pastry and merge them. It didn’t feel right somehow – I was worried that I hadn’t split the butter up evenly. But the pastry felt OK and it mostly held together.

The Apples

This recipe calls for 1.5kg of apple, which meant 11 Bramleys for me. This was the first recipe that asks for the apples to be pre-cooked for 3-4 minutes, with sugar, whiskey and a cinnamon stick.

The use of alcohol in the tart was another first for this project. The “golden raisins” (aka sultanas) were soaked in whiskey and sugar before being added to the apple mixture. I’ve never been a huge fan of dried fruit in apple tart but if they’re soaked in alcohol then I get why they’re there – each sultana was a little hit of whiskey.

The Bake

This is where it got challenging for me. Richard instructs for the base to be baked blind for 10 minutes. Then you add an eggwash and bake again for 5 minutes. Then you add another eggwash and bake for another 5 minutes.

Once that process is complete, you add the apple/fruit mixture and finish off with a 20 minute bake. 20 minutes seemed way too short to me for the amount of apple but I followed the instructions and tasted it. The pastry was just about OK – the lid was slightly underdone. The apple mixture tasted good – the whiskey tones were definitely there. The apples were hard though and I prefer a softer effect, so I put it back in for an extra 10 minutes. This softened the apples alright, but it also dried out the tart,

The Dish

Richard asks for a 28cm baking ring and I was using a 23cm pie dish, so my dimensions were admittedly wrong. I had to leave some of the apple and pastry aside as they didn’t fit.

The Hot Slice

My sultanas definitely hadn’t distributed very evenly and you can see how dry it is. But dryness aside, it did look like a good, solid slice of tart.

The Rested Result

It looks better than it tasted.

If We Repeeled

• Cut the apple a bit smaller and maybe pre-cook for a few more minutes
• Distribute the sultanas more evenly
• Use a larger dish
• Stick to the 20 minute bake time

Scores

Simplicity of bake: Complicated
Pastry texture: Both the pastry base and the lid were very heavy
Pastry taste: The sugar on the top gave it a nice sweetness
Apple texture: Too hard after the first bake – the extended bake softened it but also dried it out
Apple taste: Good after the first bake – you could taste the whiskey in the sultanas. It had dried out when I baked it for longer.
Apple to pastry ratio: Good – a lot of pastry and a lot of apple/fruit
Overall score: 4 out of 10