Recipe: Apple Pie

Its Apple Pie. Yummilicious Apple Pie.  Do you want me to talk and describe or should I just get onto the recipe? ... I thought so...

Ingredients:

The Crust:

2.5 cups of all purpose Flour
200 grams of softened butter. (not melted)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
8 tablespoons of ice cold water. (I used melted ice)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
A dash of nutmeg powder
1 tablespoon honey

The Filling

4 or 5 Apples (I used red delicious washington apples)
2 tablespoons of all purpose Flour
1 cups of white sugar
1.5 tablespoons of Cinnamon powder
1/4 tablespoon of nutmeg powder
2 tablespoons of Honey
1 tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar

Along with that, you can keep a large bowl, half filled with water, and a tea spoon of lemon juice ready.

Lets COOK!!!!

Important Advice: If this is your first time making apple pies, make extra dough. Increase all the ingredients by proportion. If some goes to extra, just put it in the oven to bake, its going to taste like buttery shortbread when it comes out.
Sift out the flower in a bowl/pot. Add in your dry ingredients like salt, sugar, cinnamon powder and nutmeg.

For this recipe you want your ingredients to be as cold as possible. Even your butter should be left out to soften on its own. If you need to microwave your butter, do not let it melt inside.

Add in your butter to the flour.

 

Pour in the honey.

Mix together your dough gently. Add the cold water one teaspoon at a time. As my mom described it, your dough should feel dry. It should just about barely hold together.
Wrap your dough in some plastic and set it to refrigerate for a good 20 minutes. Thats up in the freezer section. You want your dough cold.

While our dough is getting cold, its time to work on the filling.

Start with pouring out the cup of sugar into a large mixing bowl.

Add in your cinnamon powder. I tend to go a bit overboard with cinnamon, I just love it that much. You cannot get too much cinnamon in your apple.

Add in your nutmeg. I just sprinkle a dash of it on. 

I love the fact that my mother enjoys collecting ingredients. It was the bottle of Apple cider vinegar that we have in our pantry that inspired me make apple pie in the first place. Add in a tablespoon of the stuff. 

Add your 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 to 2 tablespoons of honey and mix the whole thing together. Cover and keep it to the side while you prepare your apples.

I love these Washington Red Delicious apples. Peel, slice and core them to your desired size. A piece of advice, smaller is better here. 

Interesting tip: If you let the cut pieces soak in a bowl of water which has a teaspoon of lemon juice added to it , they wont turn brown while you are busy cutting the rest of the apples. I guess the acid in the lemon juice prevents the iron in the apples from oxidizing.

Once your apples are cut, drain the water and throw them into the bowl with the sugar mixture. Mix it around completely and make sure the apples are well coated with the spices.

Can I just add that it looks and smells yummy? It took some serious willpower to not eat half of it right then and there.
Start up your oven and get it to 220 degrees centigrade. 
By now your dough should be ready, so take it out of the fridge.

Cut it into two halves. Take one half and roll it to the size of your Pie dish. Bit of advice from Mommy: Put it between two sheets of plastic, makes rolling the dough a lot easier.
Lay the dough onto your pie dish. Use a fork to poke holes in it to let out the steam.

Add in the filling.

 

I put 5-6 lumps of butter on the filling. This melts and merges with the apples, increasing the richness of the flavours. 

You can now roll out the top crust, or weave it in a net. Mom showed me an easy way of doing this. Put two strips in the center vertically. On top put two strips horizontally. Now move from the center outwards, adding one strip on each side, first on horizontally, and then vertically. 

To prevent the edges from browning too much, cover them with aluminum foil.

If your oven is up to temperature, pop the apple pie in. You would want to bake it for about 15 minutes at 220, and then lower the temperature down to about 190-200 degrees for another 30-40 minutes.

It is ready when the crust is a golden brown and the juices start to seep up. Remove and serve it nice and warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. YUMMMMM!!!!

Recipe: Honey Apple Cinnamon Rolls

There are some things that just sound delicious. As I write the title to this post, I'm eating a roll right now and I'm yet drooling at the sight of those words.
Careful, this recipe has enough sugar, butter and sweetness to... well... you need to join a gym.
This is not a recipe for a light Cinnamon Roll. This is going to be heavy, sugary, sweet and scrumptious.

Ingredients: (Makes about 12-14 rolls)

The Roll

4-5 cups Flour.
150 grams Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 Egg
1 Tablespoon Honey
100 grams Melted Butter
3-4 Teaspoons White Sugar
1/2 cup of warm water
1.5 Tablespoons of Salt
10 Grams of Instant Dried Yeast.
1 Teaspoon of sugar (for the yeast)

The Filling

500 grams Apples
4 Tablespoons Honey
1 Tablespoons Cinnamon
1/2 Tablespoon Nutmeg
100 grams Melted Butter
1 tablespoon Sugar
Salt (optional, up to you really)
1 teaspoon lemon juice

The Icing

250 grams Sweetened Condensed Milk
6 Tablespoons of Sugar
5 Tablespoons of Melted Butter
Cinnamon, nutmeg to taste
Milk to adjust the thickness.

For Coating the Flour

2 Cups of Flour
Lots of sugar (appox 10 Tablespoons)
Lots of Cinnamon (approx 15 Tablespoons)
2 Tablespoons nutmeg.
Lots of Melted Butter (approx 200 grams)
(If you don't know why I'm not giving exact quantities, wait for the pictures)


Lets COOK!!!

Starting with the dough for the rolls.You want to start with about 3- 3.5 cups initially. Sift through the flour and add in the dry ingredients like salt and sugar and mix it together.



Take the warm water and add the teaspoon of sugar and the yeast to it. Let it rest for a few minutes for the yeast to get activated.



In the meantime, break an egg into a bowl. Beat it with a fork till you get an even mixture. If you want your dough to be really light and fluffy, you can first beat the whites till they are stiff so you get more air into the dough. You can also increase the amount of eggs in it, removing either the condensed milk, or adding more flour.



Now a lot of recipes call for Milk to be used along with sugar. I prefer to make this with Sweetened Condensed Milk. I think it makes the dough a little bit creamier.



Yummm... a significant portion of that was consumed during the cooking process. Oh cmon, you cannot expect me to not lick the spoon clean, or make sure that the sweetness of the milk was right.....

Anyway, make a well in the center of the dough, and add in the wet ingredients.Knead it all together.
The remaining flour should be added in slowly till you achieve the desired texture. You are hoping to achieve a consistency where it is still oh so slightly moist, but if you press a finger tip into it, you don't want any flour stuck to your finger. A bit on the drier side is also alright.
Put the dough in a spacious bowl somewhere, cover it and let it rest for an hour. You want the size of the dough to almost double.



Right, now you can get onto making the filling. You start with your apples and peel them.



Grate them into small pieces. You can also dice them if you want solid apple chunks in your rolls.



Add in a decent helping of cinnamon.



Pour in the honey.



I added just a dash of nutmeg to this.



Pour in the melted butter, lemon, salt, sugar, everything else.



Take a fork and mix it all around. Make sure you coat the apples with the mixture completely. Cover it and let it rest and let the flavours mingle....mmm...that sounds so yummy when I say that.



Lets hope your dough is done by now, else go watch a TV show. I went and played with my dog who spent more time licking the remnants of apple and honey off my fingers.
When your dough has risen, get a large surface cleaned. Sprinkle on plenty of flour onto the surface. This will prevent the dough from sticking to it and will also get incorporated into the dough.



You can add baking powder and baking soda to your dough now if you want it to be lighter.
Roll out the dough into a nice large rectangle. Aim for it to be about 9-10 inches in width and between 1/4 to 1/3 of an inch thick. This means you will get a length of anything upto 2 feet or more. (close to 2.5 in my case).



Remember the part where I said you are going to need lots of melted butter?



Start pouring and spreading !!!



Dont worry if you get too much on. I had little pools of butter on the dough at the end of it.



After this you want to sprinkle on the cinnamon. Be liberal. Add the nutmeg on top, sprinkle the sugar.



The reason I could not give an accurate measure is that there are times your dough will end up being longer. You might need more butter, you might need less. Also everyone has a different taste for how much sugar and cinnamon they would like. If you wanted standard tasting cinnamon rolls, go buy them, don't waste your time making them. The key here is to make it to YOUR taste.

Take the filling and layer it onto dough leaving about an inch on both sides (the longer ones).



Now, this part is a bit harder than it looks , but easier than it sounds. Roll the dough over.



Take a sharp knife and start cutting the roll into little pieces. I went for most of them being about an inch thick, but I experimented to see how the different thickness go. I think about 1 inch is a good size.
I had buttered up and aluminium pan and put all the rolls in.



Now you want to allow the rolls to sit for a while. The dough should still rise a little and the rolls should get a bit thicker. Say about 10-15 minutes? In the mean time you can start the oven and get it to 180 degrees centigrade.
Pop them in the oven for about 18-25 minutes.



For the icing, I used the remaining (about 250 grams) of condensed milk. You can probably do with half the quantity. But I didnt have anything to use the milk in, so what the hell. You cannot go wrong with extra Icing.



Pour in the butter.



Add your sugar.



Add your cinnamon, nutmeg to taste and give it a good whisk.



If the consistency is too thick, you can add a little milk to get it where you want.
Anyway, by now the rolls should be done. You want the edges to be brown.



Get the rolls out onto a plate, pour the icing over the rolls and ENJOY.



If you want to send it to someone, you can even make it look really appetizing by putting it in a bowl and absolutely smothering it with icing.