The Core Facts

Overall verdict: The spices overpowered the apple in this one and made it seem heavy. It’s not a light apple pie.
Timings: 20 mins prep + 30 mins chill + 75 mins in oven
Sugar: 163g
Butter: 254g
Type of apple: Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Gala (I used Pink Lady instead of GD and Gala)

The Long Peel

This spiced apple pie recipe from Curtis Stone was my first Australian bake. Spice is definitely the operative word – there’s quite a lot of clove, nutmeg and cinnamon and they overpower the apple flavour completely. The apple wedges remained hard as well, so the effect was a spice filling with lumps.

The Pastry

Curtis’s pastry recipe is really simple and it rolled out nicely. I’m definitely getting better at this pastry lark.

The Apples

Curtis asks for 3 Granny Smith, 2 Golden Delicious and 2 Gala apples. I had to modify that slightly – I used 4 Granny Smith and 3 Pink Lady as that was all I had available. The apples are cut into wedges and then added to a bowl containing the sultanas, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt. It’s mixed together and then spooned onto the pastry base.

This is only the second recipe to ask for dried fruit – the other one was the Richard Corrigan apple pie recipe. Richard soaks the sultanas in whiskey first, so they had a purpose as mini whiskey bombs. I didn’t mind them in Curtis’s recipe but they dried fruit in apple pie never quite seems right to me.

The Bake

This pie goes in for 20 minutes at around 220 degrees and then another 55 minutes at around 180. I used foil to stop it really charring around the edges but it didn’t work very well.

The Dish

Curtis specifies a 9 inch pie plate, which is more or less what I was using.

The Hot Slice

You can see that all the sultanas have convened at the edge of the pie – not sure why that happened. The slice held together well:

The Rested Result

You can see the wedges of apple that didn’t quite soften down properly:

If We Repeeled

• I’d cut the apples more thinly

Scores

Simplicity of bake: Simple
Pastry texture: A little overdone on top but flaky and crisp
Pastry taste: Buttery pastry that compliments the filling
Apple texture: Quite gloopy but with hard lumps of apple
Apple taste: The spices completely overpower the apple and sultanas
Apple to pastry ratio: Fine
Overall score: 7 out of 10