Saturday Snippet: Apple Pie

Hello everyone!

So alright, I will admit - like I've said a while ago, me and baking or me and cooking don't really go together. BUT I have a lot of time when I'm at home (or I shovel time aside, sometimes you just have to be violent) to experiment a little bit.

Browsing through random stuff in the kitchen, I stumbled over an old notebook of my mother's, which used to be tagged with blood red letters saying DO NOT TOUCH, MOVE AWAY SLOWLY BEFORE SOMETHING GOES BOOM.

Haha that's just the way you see it as a kid!

But it was a book of her old recipes, and I found the one for apple pie that my maternal grandmother used to make (and we all LOVED to devour). Here it is below!

So first off, there are MANY apple pie recipes. This is just one of them, but it's fairly simple, even for non-bakers, and sooooo yummy. The older members of my family have been falling over themselves for this, if I do say so myself, which is an accomplishment for someone who hasn't baked for the first 26 years of her life!

Now, to the recipe.

For the dough, you will need:

* 500 grams of flour

* 250 grams of margarine (or soft butter)

* 80 grams of icing sugar

* 15 grams of baking powder (or one packet if it comes in those)

* 2 whole eggs

Toss this all into a bowl and mix it up, you can use your hands, it comes out great even then. Side note: it's also incredibly sticky because the end result is fluffy and light. No one bothered to tell me this so I'm throwing in the helpful tidbit.

You leave it to sit while you move along. For the filling, aka apples, you'll need

* 4 medium-big apples

* 15 grams of vanilla sugar (or again, a packet if it comes in those)

* 150 grams of sugar

* cinnamon

Peel the apples and grate them, and you may want to let the excess juice dribble out before you put them in the pie. Toss the vanilla sugar, sugar and cinnamon (by taste, this, some people like more of it, some less) into the bowl with the apples and stir so it's evenly distributed.

Now, when I add the margarine to the doug, I usually leave behind a bit; one part I use in this next step where I take breadcrumbs and the margarine and put them into a pan just to get a lovely brownish colour, slightly roasted. The other half of the leftover margarine is put to use in the pan that'll be used to bake the pie; you rub it all over so the dough won't stick and burn.

Now the fun part!

Take half of the dough and spread it evenly into the pan, then the first layer are the breadcrumbs; after that it's the apples, and from the second half of the dough you make a net-pattern over the top. Voila! Put this into a pre-heated oven at 175-180 degrees Celsium and bake for 20-25 minutes. My advice is to be there the first time around and see how the oven and pie are getting along, since each oven is different. But after it's done, wait till it cools, and serve!

Note: this is how the pie looks like after my dad decides he absolutely 'has to make sure it baked okay so no one's stomach suffers'

xx

*images are mine