The Core Facts

Overall verdict: A tasty apple pie that adds cornflour to the apples to give a slightly solid, almost jellied texture to the filling
Timings: 15 mins prep + 45-55 minutes in oven
Sugar: 170g
Butter: 250g
Type of apple: Bramleys

The Long Peel

The Hairy Bikers’ apple pie recipe appears very straightforward but it does offer a couple of quirks, namely lemon zest in the pastry and cornflour in the apples.

The Pastry

The pastry rolled really well and fitted into the dish without tearing or other trouble. My only disappointment was that I couldn’t taste the lemon zest in the finished product – I love orange zest in pastry for mince pies, so I was pleased when the Bikers asked for the zest of one lemon to be added to the pastry for this pie. But it didn’t make an impact.

I was pleased to see a few instructions for decoration – in this case they asked for pastry leaves to be cut out and added before the eggwash and the sugar sprinkling. This is quite rare – only the Paul Hollywood apple pie, the Clodagh McKenna apple pie, the Mary Berry apple pie and the Nigella Lawson apple pie suggested any embellishments.

The Apples

Only a few recipes have asked for cornflour to be added to the apples. It seems to be an American thing – the Thomas Keller apple pie was one that included cornflour, along with the Bill Yosses apple pie. However, I didn’t fully appreciate the impact of it until the Hairy Bikers pie came out of the oven and I noticed the lack of any juice when I sliced the pie.

It tasted fine. The HBs also ask for sugar and cinnamon to be added to the apples, and the spice stood out as the main flavour. I found the slightly jellied texture to be a tiny bit odd.

The Bake

The Bikers ask for 45-55 minutes in the oven. I gave mine 45 mins and that was fine – the apples were good and soft and the pastry was baked through:

The Dish

The Hairy Bikers don’t specify a tin size so I used my 23cm dish. It seemed to work OK, although they mention piling the apples high and I didn’t have enough apples to do that.

The Hot Slice

This was a great pie for slicing. The slightly solid filling made it very unmessy.

The Rested Result

The ‘jellied’ consistency of the filling is quite clear from this video below – I’m not sure it looks that appealing, but it tasted fine.

If We Repeeled

• Use more apples

Scores

Simplicity of bake: Simple
Pastry texture: Flaky with a sugar crunch on yop
Pastry taste: Buttery with a sweet hit
Apple texture: Solid, almost jellied, but not in a bad way
Apple taste: Good hit of cinnamon but you could taste the apples
Apple to pastry ratio: Maybe a few more apples would have been good
Overall score: 8/10