Vanillia Cinnamon Apple pie

Its a simple recipe for Apple Pie, but simple can sometimes be the best! This makes a small pie which is about 7 inch wide and 1 inch deep, which serves about 4 people or 2 if your feeling greedy! I use a glass dish as it makes it easier to see when the pastry has cooked in the oven, so you dont have soggy pastry when you come to serve it.

To start off you will need to make some sweet shortcrust pastry, this will need to rest for 10-15 mins in the fridge before hand so its easy to role out.

To make the pastry you need to weigh out;
8oz (226g) of plain flour
2oz (56g) Lard
2oz(56g) Butter / thou i use Stork margarine as i'm lactose intolerant!
1oz of Sugar 
30-40 ml of Water

Rub the fat into the flour until its like breadcrumbs or till big lumps have disappeared (this can also be done in the food processor) then add sugar and mix with a spoon.

Add the water BUT not all at once, because sometime you will need less water than stated and sometimes you will need more! You want to dough to have come together and be firm not water logged. if it does, all you have to do is add a touch more flour. Then wrap in clinic film and place is the fridge.

Pie Filling


2 Baking Apples (Bramley's) or 4 sweet regular apples is you cant get hold of Bramley's
1 Tablespoon of sugar
2 Teaspoons of Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon of Vanilla essences

Pre heat oven to 190C / 374F / gas mark 5 / fan oven 170C

 To construct the Pie you need to role out the pastry, what i do is, cut the pastry in half, role into a ball and place it onto a piece of cling film, which i have placed on the kitchen work top where i plan to role it out. Then i press it down with my hand, and then place another piece of cling film on top and now role out the pastry, this way you dont have to add more flour and makes less of a mess of your kitchen! Role it out so its wider than the dish you plan to use, so you have enough pastry to go up the sides of the dish.

The best thing about using clinic film is when moving the pastry you just have to pick up the bottom piece, obviously you need to remove the top piece when putting it into the pie dish!

 Peel apples, cut in to quarters and remove the core, then slice the apples in to a bowl (id say no more than a cm thich as they wont cook) then add the sugar, cinnamon and vanilla and mix, i use my hand but you can use a spoon if you wish.
Then place on top of pastry in pie dish. Then role out the remaining pastry in the same way as before, if you've done it right you can even use the same cling film! place on top of the and cut away the excess, you'll find you'll have quite a bit left and this can be frozen and re-used at a later date! You can sprinkle a little more sugar on top of the pie if you wish.

Then cook the pie until pastry is cooked and golden brown, the benefit of using a glass dish is you can see when the bottom is cooked, mine took about 30 minutes.

Remove from oven.. Then Eat! (Maybe leave to cool slightly, as i dont want to be responsible for burnt roof of mouths!)