Old Dutch Apple Pie

Monday is Dennis' birthday. He asked me to bake a pie. "The one I always do, with the apples" he said.

Oh, and if I could make of for his colleagues at work on Sunday as well.

And...please, can I make one extra so we have some for the day after his birthday...

So suddenly I was kneading this massive dough!

The recipe is simple and so Dutch. It's my

grandmothers old recipe from her old cooking-book, but then adapted to what she prefers (my mum guessed the recipe is actually older then the cooking-book in which she wrote the adaptations, which means it's over 70 years old, maybe even older she said).

The good thing is that you can make this pie in basically every oven. Hot air or whatever. I even once made it in a pot on a cole fire and once I'd

put it in the microwave. And it always turns out well.

Now I don't even use scales anymore to weigh all ingredients. I just guess and 'feel' that it's all right.

And because I make this pie so often I decided to share this old recipe with you. This is the translated version, as even for some Dutchies the old Dutch language is difficult to read :)

Recipe, for one pie in a 16cm tin.

Dough:

• 300g flour
• 120g brown sugar
• 210g butter (no margarine)
• 1 large egg
• grated lemon peel of one lemon
• some salt

Filling:

• 3 or 4 sour apples (like the green 'granny smith')
• 2 spoons of normal sugar
• 3 table-spoons of apricot jam
• some cinnamon
• if you want: dried white raisins

Add the flour together with a sniff of salt and the lemonpeel in a bowl.

Add the butter. Cut the butter into little blocks and stir it through the flour mixture.

Add the browsugar and most of the beaten egg.

Knead the dough into a cohesive ball.

If the dough is too weak, put it into the fridge for a while.

Rub the tin (or silicone form) with a bit of butter. Take off 1/4 of the dough (for the topping) and push and knead the dough in the tin so it fills the bottom and the side. The dough has to be less then 1cm thick. I often make it even thinner then 0,5cm.

If your worried of the dough sticking onto the sides after baking it, then don't rub the dough in the tin itself but roll it out separately and lay it in the tin on a layer of rubbed in butter with some flour over it.

Now cut the apples in small parts or blocks (whatever you prefer) and put them in the a bowl. Always cut off the peel of the apples. The peel makes the pie taste a bit bitter. And the texture is not too nice for the rather 'soft' (or more 'al dente) pie.

Add the apricot jam, a spoon of sugar, a sniff of cinnamon and the dry raisins. If you want you can add some lemon juice to avoid the apples turning brown. Stir the mixture and put it all into the bed of dough.

Now make little 'dough stripes' for the topping and garnish the apples with the stripes. Make a funny text or put them in classic diamonds over the mixture.

'Paint' the diamond pattern with the rest of the whipped egg and the rest of the sugar.

Now comes the difficult part: baking the pie.

Depending on your microwave, oven, or barbecue you should just keep an eye on the baking process. In the oven I have at home it takes 50 minutes on 200 degrees (Celcius) but my parents oven has a double function (microwave/hot air) and then it takes only 20 minutes. On a fire I always have to watch so the bottom doesn't burn and when you only use the microwave you have to watch that the dough doesn't get too hard.

Just see it as a bit experiment. Once you get the skills you can make this pie everywhere, even when you're our camping!

Happy birthday and enjoy!