The Core Facts

Overall verdict: A bold pie where the apple flavour is overpowered by the honey
Timings: 20 mins prep + 90 mins chilling + 50 mins bake
Sugar: 200g + 170g honey
Butter: 280g
Type of apple: I used Granny Smith and Pink Lady (see below for more on this)

The Long Peel

This is President Barack Obama’s favourite dessert, apparently. If that is correct, then we can deduce that he likes his honey because that’s very much the main flavour in Bill Yosses’ apple pie recipe.

Bill used to be the executive chef at the White House and the recipe link above also shows you a video of him producing the pie. Unfortunately, the video and the recipe don’t match and a lot of people in the comments section are annoyed about that. So proceed with caution on this one.

The Pastry

The pastry production was straight-forward but there was a lot of chilling involved – one hour for the pastry discs and then another 30 minutes for the pastry base once it was in the dish. Bill also asks for the base to be blind-baked for 30 minutes, which I always think is an unnecessary faff but I went with it.

The Apples

Bill uses 3lbs of apples for this recipe, which is about nine apples. He lists several varieties – Honeycrisp, Gala, Granny Smith, Macintosh – and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to use all of them or some of them. I went for Granny Smith and then substituted Pink Lady for Honeycrisp (although I think Gala is readily available in the UK).

The apples are tossed in the mixture of sugar, honey, cornflour, vanilla, cinnamon, and lemon juice/zest. Bill asks that this mixture is left to stand for 20 minutes, which was a first. You then bring it to the boil for 10 minutes before letting it cool.

The Bake

Bill instructs for the pie to be baked for 30-40 minutes, which seemed relatively short. He did give the added advice that the apple juice should be coming through the 10 vents in the top – if I had waited for this, maybe the apple would have been softer.

The Dish

Bill doesn’t specify a size for the dish. I went with my trusty 23cm pie dish and it seemed to work.

The Hot Slice

It didn’t slice very well – my base struggled to hold the filling and it fell apart. This seemed a bit odd when the base had been blind-baked:

The Rested Result

You can see how each segment of apple was coated with honey, and how the apples had not softened as much as I expected. You can also see that the base had disintegrated somewhat:

If We Repeeled

• Cut the apple smaller
• Try using less honey
• Make the base a bit thicker
• Bake until the apple juice was coming through the vents

Scores

Simplicity of bake: Quite time-consuming
Pastry texture: Really crumbly, almost to the point of falling apart on the plate
Pastry taste: Buttery with a nice sweet crunch on top
Apple texture: Surprisingly hard, considering it had been pre-boiled
Apple taste: The honey overpowers everything – I couldn’t taste the apple at all
Apple to pastry ratio: Good
Overall score: 7 out of 10