Dutch Apple Pie

I never was too fond of the apple pie, until I tasted one earlier this year, bought in a Dutch supermarket in Amsterdam- it was an easy heat and eat pie and I loved it. I could only imagine how much better it would taste fresh.The cakey crumbly base with the cinnamon apple filling- it was amazing. It took me a while to find a recipe which would be close to the Dutch apple pies I had in the Netherlands. And it was perfect ! It is no doubt one of the best desserts I have had. I had it for breakfast for the next three days! had it with custard, had it warm, had it straight out of the fridge. I can’t wait to make it again actually!

You will need:

180 g butter, cut into cubes
120 g soft brown sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten lightly
300 g self raising flour
For the filling:
5-6 apples small to medium sized (I used 1 Gala and rest English dessert apples but I guess most apples would be alright)
Zest of ½ lemon
Juice of ¼ lemon, about 1 ½-2 tbsp
60 g soft brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon powder
a little less than ¼ tsp of grated nutmeg
1 tsp cornflour

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 ˚C fan. Adjust the temperature according to your oven.
2. Now, in a food processor, mix the butter and brown sugar till it is creamed together, it lightens in colour.
3. Add a pinch of salt, pulse the food processor to mix. Keep aside just a little bit of beaten egg- enough to brush the pie in the end,  and add the rest of the of the egg to the mix in the food processor for a minute.
4. Add the flour in 3 parts till the whole mix comes together into dough. It takes a few minutes, once it comes together then do not over mix. Keep this aside while you make the filling.
5. Peel the apples and cut into bite sized pieces. Mix the apple with the rest of the filling ingredients.
6. Now in a springform cake tin, uniformly press two third of the dough along the base and side of the tin.
7. Add the apple filling and press it down with the back of a spatula. Now spread the 1/3 of the dough, crumbling it uniformly on top of the apples. Brush with the beaten egg that was kept aside and sprinkle about a tbsp of brown sugar.
8. Bake at 180 ˚C for 45 minutes. If the top starts to get deep brown just cover it with a bit of baking sheet.
9. Cool the pie in the tin. Serve it warm with custard.

Serve warm apple pie with fresh warm custard

Thanks for visiting and you are welcome to leave your comments.

Key Lime Pie

How good is the new series of the Great British Bake Off!! I wait for it week after week. I think I will try to make one of the recipes every week as the series commences – that will be my personal challenge.

It was a coincidence that I had just baked a key lime pie the previous weekend and Ryan won the star baker at the show stopper challenge of Great British Bake Off with his amazing Key lime pie! Had I seen that before I might have tried adding stem ginger to it…well I will have to make it again another time soon.

160 gm Digestive biscuits
50 gm Ginger nut biscuits
90 gm butter, melted
1 tin of condensed milk (about 400 gm)
3 medium egg yolks
zest of 3 limes (I know the traditional Key lime pie is made of ‘Key limes’ but that is not readily available in the UK, so the usual limes would have to do)
juice of 3 limes

To serve:
150 ml fresh double cream
1 tbsp icing sugar (or more as per your taste)
lime zest to decorate

1. Pre-heat the oven to 140 ˚C (fan oven).
2. Put the biscuits in the food processor and whizz till it forms uniform crumbs.
3. Add the melted butter to the biscuit crumbs and mix with a spatula till uniformly mixed.  Press this mixture into a 9″ tart tin along its base and sides. I used a loose base tart tin but you can also use springform cake tin as well. Bake this for 10 minutes and then take it out of the oven and cool. Prepare the filling while this cools.
4. Using an electric mixer or a hand whip, whisk the egg yolks for about a minute. Then add the condensed milk and whisk for another 3 minutes. Add the lime zest, mix and then add the lime juice and mix for 3 minutes.
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared base and bake at 140˚C fan oven for 15 minutes (the pie should have set but still a bit wobbly in the middle). It might take a few more minutes depending on oven.
6. Cool the pie in the tin on a wire rack and then chill. To serve whip up the double cream with icing sugar and garnish with lime zest.

Well, I did not decorate mine show stopper style, once I have finished baking all I can think about is eating it!!!

Note to self: Add another lime juice and zest next time to make the zing a little more sharp!
Thanks for stopping by.

 

Whoop whoop whoopie!!pie

After a bit of busy month I have finally had a chance to put together some more recipes from my recent baking episodes. I have had whoopie pie only once before. It’s an American cakey-cookie not always seen in UK cafe or shops.I totally loved the chocolatey delicious treats.  So I thought I will give it a go. Most classic whoopie pie recipes had marshmallow fluff for filling. Unfortunately I could not find any in the supermarkets in Edinburgh until very recently when I saw it in a  specialty shop.  But I did try making it on my own with marshmallows-that did not work!

This recipe has been adapted from joyofbaking.com

230 grams plain flour
75 grams cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp soda bicarbonate
1/4 tsp salt
150 grams granulated white sugar
170 grams butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup buttermilk
Instant coffee in  120 ml of warm water

Pre-heat the fan oven to 190°C. You might need to adjust the temperature according to your oven.

For buttermilk, since I did not have any and was not too keen to go out and buy some, I made a quick homemade buttermilk. In 1/4 cup of milk I added about a tsp of lemon juice and let it stand for 10 minutes.

Then add the coffee to the buttermilk.

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, soda bicarbonate and salt together.
Get the butter to room temperature. Add sugar to it and with a hand mixer, beat it till the mixture is light and fluffy.

Now add the egg and beat it in. Then in three portions, beat in the flour mixture alternating with the coffee-buttermilk till everything is mixed smoothly.

Using an ice-cream scoop, drop about a tablespoon of the mixture on the baking sheet lined tray. Smooth the top with moistened finger.

Space the dough out on the baking tray.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 10-15 minutes or till a skewer comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack.

The cookies should spring back upon pressing when done.

So for the filling, as I said I did try to make marshmallow fluff by microwaving marshmallows. It melted but when I tried to spread it onto the pies it was just sticky and stretchy. So I made some basic chocolate buttercream and spread it on the flat side of one cookie and sandwich it to the flat side of another.

The whoopie pies were moist and crumbly and chocolatey and yummy 🙂 whooopiiee for that!!

.....then only the crumbs remain 😀

I went an extra step to make things more chocolatey…dipped the pies in melted chocolate!

Thanks for stopping by!