Charlotte Pike

Food & Drink Expert

Uncategorized

Apple Pie

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Apple pie

Copyright Charlotte Pike

Ingredients

 For the pastry

 300g/2 ½ cups plain flour

150g/2/3 cup butter, cubed and chilled

4 tsp caster sugar

2 egg yolks

8 tsp ice cold water

For the apple filing

650g eating apples, peeled, cored and cut into slices

70g/generous 1/3 cup caster sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

4 tsp water

1 egg, beaten

3 tbsp caster sugar for sprinkling

Method

Place the apple slices into a saucepan with the sugar, cinnamon and water and cook for 10 minutes. The apples should have softened a little during this time.Set aside to cool.

If you are making pastry, start with this first. If not, skip to the asterisks ***

Place the flour and butter into a bowl. Rub together lightly using your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs

Add the sugar and egg yolk and stir into the butter and flour

Finally, add the cold water, a little at a time. Take a table knife and use this to stir the mixture to mix the water in.

Once the water has been added, bring the pastry together to form a ball. Wrap in cling film and chilli in the fridge for 20 minutes

Whilst the pastry is chilling, preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6. Grease a 24cm pie dish, or a 20cm/ 8” round spring form tin well and set aside

When the pastry is chilled, take two large sheets of clingfilm, place half the ball of pastry between the two sheets and roll out to be thin enough to fit the tin – ¼-½ cm thickness is generally about right.

***Fit the pastry to the tin and press into the edges and round the sides. If you are using the springform tin, build the pastry up to 5 cm up the sides of the tin and cut around the edges neatly. If you have any thin patches, just press any excess pastry over them to cover them up. If you are using the pie dish, leave 1-2cm excess pastry around the rim.

Fill the pastry case with the apple mixture.

Roll out the second half of the pastry as you did the first half. Place the pastry on top of the pie and cut around the edge of the dish using a knife.

Dampen down the edges of both pieces of pastry with water. To do this, take a little cold water in a glass. Dip your finger in the water and then dab it onto the edges of the pastry to moisten. Then, take a fork, and press down around the rim of the pie to seal the pastry.

Brush the pie with the beaten egg to glaze, and sprinkle with the caster sugar. Make a couple of cuts in the centre of the pie using a sharp knife

Bake the pie for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

Serve with cream, custard or ice cream

Apple Tarte Tatin

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Apple Tarte Tatin

This is a gorgeous dessert to make, but really does have the wow factor. Although it looks fancy, it’s very simple to make.

Serves 8

Ingredients

50g salted butter

50g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 ripe apples, peeled, cored and halved

200-250g ready made, ready rolled puff pastry

Method 

Preheat the oven to 200C/180 Fan oven/ Gas Mark 4. Take an 8”/20cm springform tin and grease very well with butter

Place the butter and sugar in a large frying pan. Melt the butter over a low heat, and then turn the temperature up to high, allowing the mixture to bubble away until it turns a rich, reddish brown in colour

Turn the heat right down as soon as the sugar caramelizes as it can burn easily. Add the vanilla extract and stir into the caramel.

Add the apples to the caramel, cut side facing up and cook in the caramel sauce very gently over a low heat for 10 minutes. Spoon the caramel over the apples whilst they are cooking

Arrange the apples, again, cut side up, in the bottom of the cake tin, and pour the caramel over the top.

Take your puff pastry and cut out a circle to fit in the tin. Place the pastry over the fruit and tuck the excess pastry around inside the tin. Prick the pastry a couple of times on the top using a sharp knife.

Place the cake tin on a baking tray and bake the tarte in the oven for 25-30 minutes.  The puff pastry should be golden brown.

Leave the tarte to rest for 5 minutes in the tin before removing the sides of the tin. You may wish to run a sharp knife around the edge first.

Now, place a plate over the tarte and flip it over to turn the tarte out onto the plate.

Remove the base of the cake tin and serve immediately with double cream.

Roasted Rhubarb

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At the start of each year, forced rhubarb is a fruit I always look forward to arriving in my kitchen. It is particularly pretty to look at and tastes wonderful. There are so many ways in which to enjoy fresh rhubarb. It is delicious for breakfast with yoghurt and perhaps a little granola. It is a wonderful addition to so many puddings too, from meringues to pannacotta to Basque cheesecake, just to name a few. I am quite happy to eat a bowl of it on its own too.

Cooking rhubarb, however, is very simple, but benefits from adhering to some guidance. Most people enjoy eating rhubarb when it has been cooked and sweetened a little, perhaps with sugar, or honey. There is a very fine line, however, between it being cooked and tender and it turning into mush. I find roasting rhubarb helps to cook rhubarb quickly, but reliably resulting in pretty, neat pieces. Cooking on the hob in a pan, in my experience, tends to lead to overcooking much more easily.

So, here is my preferred way of cooking rhubarb below, and a photo of the rhubarb just out of the oven, ready to serve. I am deliberately showing you an unedited photo of the finished product, as it took me a fair bit of testing to work out how to achieve perfect-looking pieces of rhubarb as I had seen in so many photos elsewhere! I hope you will be encouraged to cook rhubarb this way and make the most of it this season.

Roasted Rhubarb

Serves 6

Ingredients

4 sticks of rhubarb, cut into 5cm-ish pieces
150g sugar (feel free to adjust if more is needed, or less is preferred)

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4.

Take a large oven proof dish and lay the rhubarb slices in the dish in a single layer, sprinkle over the sugar and then cover with foil.

Bake in the oven for 8 and 15 minutes until just tender. Watch it like a hawk after eight minutes, as it can turn into a mush if you leave it just a couple of minutes too long. The rhubarb is cooked when a sharp knife can be inserted in the stalk without meeting resistance. Set aside to cool.