Pie After Midnight? But of course.

Hello everyone! :)

And thus marks the beginning of my existence in the massive blogging community. I've never done this before so please, please give me some slack? I'm just hoping to jot up a few reviews of baking I recipes I try (or improv from scratch; whichever is more successful) with some colourful photos for you people. Things may or may not go smoothly depending on how much free time I have to bake, cook, photograph and blog with the ever looming presence of spring and beautiful weather, but it can't hurt to give this a try. So bear with me and maybe I can get some sort of rhythm worked out.

Anywhoo..

Having recently survived a long period of nonstop studying for exams and new course registration, I've been feeling very antsy and hoping to dirty my hands with a little baking fun. Already I managed to make a set of failed macarons during the study period; I also managed to use up a lonely jar of Nutella from our fridge on a batch of sandwich sugar cookies, and since have been feeling in the mood for pie-baking.

A friend neglected to tell me that yesterday was their birthday. I was hoping to whip something together last minute for the impromptu party but had no time and had to throw in the towel. It was only upon returning home around 1 that I realised I still had the baking itch and, having dozed a bit too much in the afternoon, decided to use up the last of my energy on a little something for a picnic date the next day.

Word of the wise: never start baking at 1a.m. unless you're already nocturnal.

Tastespotting.com has become a recent obsession for me. I chose to skim their archives for some nice apple pie recipes - easy and a good way to use up my leftover apples, right? - and came across this: Dutch Apple Pie. The photo looked wonderful, and since I've been eager to use my springform tin for a pie recipe (something about a pie with straight-up edges completely mesmerizes me) I decided to give it a go.

The recipe can be found here. I ended up making a few substitutions, which may or may not have produced the best results: I subbed half of the butter for apple sauce, and used pudding powder instead of custard to line the bottom of the pastry. The result was a very sticky dough which required extra flour.

Additionally my springform decided to take a vacation around the time I finished the dough, and so I had to substitute with a makeshift rectanglar tin of aluminum foil, instead of the recommended round 24cm tin. The dough was a bit too thin and almost left holes in some areas - which i thankfully managed to patch up.

The filling went quite well. The only thing I didn't like is the lack of specification of how much sugar goes into the pastry crust versus the filling. I ended up putting almost ALL of the sugar into the filling and only dropping a spoonful or so into the crust to avoid giving my friends diabetes. I also laid the cinnamon on a bit heavy. Either way the result had a wonderful aroma, and only a bit syrupy, so I was happy.

The stripes of (still quite sticky) dough across the top took a good 20 minutes to finish; all things included it was around 3 before I put the pie in the oven, and 4 before it was finished cooking to a nice golden brown. The edges still felt a bit soft in some areas but I think that may have been due to the initial moisture of the pie crust. The pudding powder seemed to absorb the moisture quite well, as there was still some fluid but it was quite thick and not at all watery. I put it out to cool and we'll (hopefully) be enjoying it this afternoon in the sun along the banks of the Danube.

Some closing remarks. Apple sauce in pie crust = bad idea. The dough was completely impossible to work with even after adding a ton of extra flour and a good dollop of sugar. Also be careful about how you slice the apples. Mine were quite small and I think this may have affected the moisture. Lastly - if you're up late and feeling a bit of insomnia, and have a kilo of apples and pudding powder lying around.... just make some freaking pudding.

UPDATE: The pie was a success! The pudding kept the moisture in, and the crust was a little less flaky but still tasted very good. The raisins probably had the most flavour since they absorbed almost everything.