Apple Pie with Shortcrust Pastry Sheets

I’ve referred before to my belief that frozen puff pastry is the lazy cook’s best friend. Well, frozen shortcrust pastry has just joined the BFF party 🥂 . Hunting around for a simple and quick “apple pie with shortcrust pastry sheets” recipe, I stumbled upon this recipe for traditional apple pie. I must say it absolutely delivers on the promise of a traditional-tasting pie, with all that lovely cinnamon, and a minimum amount of prep and cooking time.

Summary

Prepare apples by cutting into eighths. Mix with juice of 1 lemon, 50 grams of butter, a cinnamon stick, 1 clove, and 1/3 cup sugar over medium heat and stir until sugar is dissolved, about 10 minutes. Thaw 2 pastry sheets. Press one sheet into a greased dish, put cooled, drained apples in. Trim sheet. Cut sheet into strips to make a lattice pattern on top. Use an egg wash to brush edges and top. Bake in 200 celsius/392 fahrenheit oven for 35 minutes.

I made a few changes to the original recipe:

• I didn’t have cinnamon sticks so used a generous teaspoon of ground cinnamon instead
• I lined the 20cm pie dish
• I once trimmed too much of a home-made pastry, and lemon filling went all over my oven. So, I trimmed very little pastry here, preferring instead to fold over any excess and pinch, allowing for a generous rim at the top. Worst case scenario, there’s too much pastry – what a shame to have to eat it 😂
• Of course, remove the cinnamon stick and clove before baking
• I didn’t discard the excess liquid, as there wasn’t much. It made a sustainable sweet “pick me up” drink the next day.

History

The first recorded recipe for apple pie goes back to England in the Middle Ages. The recipe for “Tartis in Applis” appeared in the 1391 cookbook The Forme of Cury apparently put together by Richard II’s cooks. You can find a picture of the recipe here. Apples were cooked in a pastry “coffin” with apples, pears, raisins and figs, and saffron as spice and colour. The pastry case was not meant to be eaten.

“I wanted to put a quote here about apple pie, but it was too flaky.”

-Stewed Pears