The Core Facts

Overall verdict: If you’re looking for something different, this might be it – it has cheese in the pastry, which compliments the apple better than I expected. But it does create a more savoury effect. If you want a sweet apple pie, I’d stick with a simpler alternative.
Timings: 40 mins prep + 45 mins bake
Sugar: 100g
Butter: 130g + 50g white baking vegetable fat
Type of apple: Bramley and Cox (I substituted Granny Smith for the latter)

The Long Peel

I actually bought a second-hand copy of How To Be A Domestic Goddess especially for Nigella Lawson’s apple pie recipe. People rave about Nigella and rave about this pie and I totally understand why – her writing style is warm and helpful, and in the right setting this recipe would wow a crowd.

Her pie was not for me, though. I know this because I hardly touched it – I’m usually constantly picking at the pies that I produce and two days later this was still intact.

There are two unique things about this recipe: first, there is cheese in the pastry. And second, there are two types of apple that are prepped in different ways, with egg added to the Bramleys.

I’ve said from the start that I’m looking for simplicity in my apple tart/pie so I’m not saying it’s not a good recipe. It’s just not the one I’m looking for.

The Pastry

Nigella instructs that the pastry ingredients – butter, Trex, flour, Cheddar, egg, water, salt – are whizzed together in a food processor. The pastry is then chilled.

In the interim between chilling and baking, I completely forgot that Cheddar had been included. When the pie went into the oven, I was unnerved by the baking aroma and spent a few worried seconds wondering if I’d added too much egg. I then realised it was the cheese. So even though it’s a small amount, it has a big impact.

Coincidentally, this was only the second recipe that asked for Trex (white vegetable fat) – Mary Berry’s Classic Apple Pie had included it first and I’d only completed that one yesterday. I’m quite the expert on it now : )

The Apples

Nigella acknowledges in the book that the apple prep for this one is time-consuming. The Bramleys are fried in butter with nutmeg and cloves and then pureed with egg. The segments of Cox (or Granny Smiths in my case) are fried and then laid on top of the apple mash,

I can see that the aim is to create a mix of soft and bite, but many other pies, such as the Darina Allen apple pie recipe or the Paul Hollywood apple pie recipe, manage this magic without such a big effort.

Nigella is not the first chef to suggest mixing egg into the apples. The French tarte aux pommes recipes – the Daniel Galmiche apple tart recipe for example – use an egg custard, but it’s sweeter. In this recipe the effect was to make it more savoury.

The Bake

Nigella suggests that you crimp the pastry edges inwards to create a pasty effect – the picture in the book clearly shows what this looks like – but for some reason I ignored the advice. If I baked it again, I would try it as it looks very neat.

It goes in for 15 minutes at a higher temperature, before completing another 30 minutes at a lower level. It came out looking magnificent:

The Dish

Nigella suggests a Springform tin so you can extract it and serve it up neatly but I stuck to my usual 23cm pie dish.

The Hot Slice

This one definitely wins the award for best looking slice:

The Rested Result

You can see the chunks of Granny Smith nestling in the softer apple base that was created by pureeing the Bramleys. The yellow is the egg that was added to the Bramley mix:

If We Repeeled

• Crimp the pastry inwards as Nigella recommends

Scores

Simplicity of bake: More complicated than most – there’s a lot of apple prep
Pastry texture: Chunky but not heavy
Pastry taste: Cheesy – it was just on the right side of too much
Apple texture: Soft with tender chunks of Granny Smith
Apple taste: I wasn’t keen on the egg element
Apple to pastry ratio: Spot on if you’re looking for a big slice of pie
Overall score: 7 out of 10