Grandma Shipway's Apple Pie

My Grandma made the best apple pies. A simple statement, but true. She also made the best pickles...she used a vegetable called choko to make the pickles. I hated choko with a passion, but I loved her pickles.

Now in my garden I have an apple tree that gives us a pretty healthy crop of cooking apples each year. This year they seem ripe earlier than usual so we started picking them yesterday. I had also been out the back of our street to collect what looked like the last of the wild summer blackberries to add to the apples for this pie.

The pastry for this recipe can very easily be made diary free, in fact up until this year, I HAVE made it dairy free for my son - he can now tolerate butter in baked goods so I used real butter within the recipe.

The photos I took this time aren't great - it was night time, we were all eager to eat and it just didn't cut well....so you are going to see the realities of baking and eating for the family, not just for the blog! Let's face it, that's how most people cook anyway, don't you?

Inside...it was jam packed full of apple and blackberries - possibly the highest pie I have ever made!

I'll add some more photos of other ones I have made with the same recipe - in tart tins, cute little individual ones with just plain apple.

Righto, so I'm guessing you want the recipe?

Grandma Shipway's Apple Pie

Ingredients:

Filling

4 - 6 green apples   (cooking apples preferably)

4 cloves

5-6 tablespoons sugar

1 c water

1 c blackberries (optional)

Pastry                                             

1 cup plain flour (150g)

1 c self raising flour (150g)

1/3 c caster sugar (80g)

2/3 c cold butter (150g)

1/3 c water (85ml more if needed)

Method:
      
Apple filling
1. Peel, core, slice and cook the apples with the cloves in 1 c water for 10-15 mins. My apples cooking very fast and in seconds can go from looking underdone, to being mush, so do watch them.
2. Drain and then add sugar, mix through and then remove the cloves. I added the blackberries in at this stage too.
3. Pre-heat oven to 220°c.

Pastry
4. Cube the cold butter and lightly rub in the sugar and sifted flour, both plain and self raising, until the mixture looks like fine bread crumbs. You could do this in the food processor if you have one, which I tend to do these days.
3. Add water and mix to a soft, but not sticky, dough. Wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.
4. Roll half the dough between two sheets of grease-proof paper to make it big enough to cover the pie dish.
5. Place the pie dish on top of pastry upside down and lift the paper and pastry (and pie dish) up and over to get the pastry onto the dish without breaking it.
6. Fill with apple mixture and top with the rest of the pastry (rolled out).
7. Trim excess pastry from the edge of the dish and use a fork to press down around the edges. Decorate with extra pastry if you want - I always use cookie cutters to match a theme - this time it was woodland creatures.
8.Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle sugar on top. Use a fork to pierce a couple of steam holes on the top. To avoid the egg (allergies!!), I brushed mine with some soya milk - did the same job equally as well, in my opinion.
9. Cook for about 10 minutes and then reduce the oven to 150°c until brown on top - total of about 35-40 mins.

Enjoy this delicious apple pie fresh from the oven, with custard, cream or ice-cream.

Notes: 

• I don't ever blind bake the pastry - and I never have a soggy bottom! However, if you'd like to blind bake, then line the raw base with baking parchment and then fill with baking beads or rice - cook for 10 mins, then remove the beads/rice and paper and bake for another 10 mins. Then, add filling and proceed.
• Add the sugar to the fruit after cooking and draining, or the sweetness (which you really need with cooking apples) will go down the drain too.