The lid smashes in when you cut it, creating a frightful (though admittedly still-delicious) mess! Pies are supposed to be all about generosity!Ī giant empty cavity under the lid – A recipe calling for raw apples to be piled high in the crust results in a bulging pastry cage for a lid. Skimpy amount of filling – Any recipe calling for less than 1.5kg / 3lb of apples will end up pretty scant on the filling. Not much apple flavour – Some recipes even boil apples … ick. Overly sweet fillings and spice overkill – I want to taste the apples! Or it’s opposite, crunchy undercooked apples – I don’t know which is worse. (And nope, thickening with cornflour/cornstarch won’t save the pie.) Apple juices have to go somewhere, you know? That somewhere is into your pastry. Soggy base or crust not properly cooked – This one’s a common problem with recipes where the crust is not blind baked before filling with apples, or raw apples are baked inside the crust. My recipe for perfect Apple Pie is really borne of all the things I have disliked about other Apple Pie recipes I have tried over the years, which I wanted to address. But this is a very long post so I don’t have time for measured politeness! We did it!!! Where so many Apple Pie recipes go wrong Recipe credits – Many thanks to my French pastry chef teacher Jennifer Pogmore and RecipeTin’s Chef JB for their assistance and expertise to bring my vision of the perfect Apple Pie to life. I hope you enjoy this recipe for many years to come! If that all sounds good to you, then dare I say this might become your perfect apple pie recipe too. And let’s not forget the base! Of course it’s got to be perfectly crispy – no exceptions. All this cosy apple goodness is encased in a shell of irresistibly flaky, buttery shortcrust. The filling is also not overly sweet and won’t leave you grasping for a glass of water. There’s some spicing but it’s even-handed and doesn’t overwhelm. My perfect pie is packed with a generous amount of apple filling that’s never mushy and never undercooked. Well, let me weigh in and tell you about my idea of the perfect Apple Pie. In America, it’s practically its own religion and talk about what exactly makes the perfect Apple Pie can get as prickly as politics. Of all the sweet pies out there, Apple Pie might just be the most iconic of them all. Serve this all-time favourite warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for the perfect homemade dessert! My perfect Apple Pie It’s also how you get a generous amount of pie filling without the dreaded giant empty cavity under the lid. It’s the magic key to a crispy base, superior flavour and perfectly-cooked-and-never-mushy filling. The one trick with this apple pie recipe that makes all the difference? Baking the apple slices first.

Big fat mature cream pie