A quick post on today’s slightly experimental culinary exploit.

It’s an apple pie day! Yeah, OK, so what?

We had loads of spare eating apples (‘cos I always buy to much fruit) and a block of puff pastry.
Chop & pre-cook the apples (on the hob for maybe 15-20 minutes) with a teaspoon of mixed spice, tablespoon of sugar and a couple of tots of sweet white wine. Being eating apples they won’t fluff down like Bramleys do, but they will soften and release quite a bit of juice.
Use the pastry to line a 20cm square flan tin.
Fill the pastry case with drained apple, fold the pastry edges over – no harm if it looks a bit rustic – scatter over a tablespoon of chopped mixed peel, glaze the pastry, and bake for about 30 minutes at 200°C.
I had 4-5 tablespoons of spiced apple liquor left, so added 2 tablespoons of sugar and 10-15ml of brandy, and reduced it to make a very sticky syrup which was drizzled over the tart when it came out of the oven.
Devour warm with double cream.

It worked better than expected and was just nicely spiced, so as not to be boring apple pie.