The Core Facts

Overall verdict: A pie with heavy pastry and spiced apple
Timings: 25 mins prep + 30 mins chill + 35-45 minutes in oven
Sugar: 143g
Butter: 170g
Type of apple: Bramleys

The Long Peel

I’d been looking for a Gordon Ramsay apple pie recipe for ages as I like no-nonsense things and he’s a no-nonsense guy. There’s some extra apple prep in this recipe but the rest of the process was easy. However, I just didn’t enjoy the end result very much.

The Pastry

I put too much sugar in the pastry as I got my tablespoon measurements wrong. This may well have resulted in the pastry being really fragile and difficult to roll.

More importantly, I wasn’t very keen on the pastry texture in the finished pie. It was stodgy and heavy.

The Apples

Gordon says that caramelising the apples in a frying pan before you load them into the dish is a game-changer. I’m not so sure. The spice combination of cinnamon and nutmeg was the dominant flavour.

The Bake

Gordon asks for 35-45 minutes in the oven. I went for 35 mins as my pie was starting to look overbaked even though I used foil:

The Dish

Gordon specified an 8 inch (20cm) pie dish. I only have my trusty 23cm one so I had to use that. As a result I didn’t really have enough apple.

The Hot Slice

The pastry was quite crumbly, so slicing was a little tricky.

The Rested Result

I used 4 large apples as instructed but it wasn’t enough, probably because I used a larger dish. You can see that the pastry was quite dry:

If We Repeeled

• Use more apples
• Don’t put too much sugar in the pastry

Scores

Simplicity of bake: Reasonably easy
Pastry texture: Heavy and quite dry
Pastry taste: Sweet, as I put too much sugar in it
Apple texture: Soft with a bit of bite
Apple taste: The spice combination of cinnamon and nutmeg is dominant
Apple to pastry ratio: It needed a lot more apple
Overall score: 7/10