THIS WINTER FALL IN LOVE WITH...WARM APPLE PIE!

It's getting colder with each passing day, Winter's upon us after the sveltering summer heat, our food choices are greatly influenced by the weather and these days I find myself cooking up more soups, stews and ...warm apple pie!...and of course lovin every minute and bite of it!!.

Apples are in abundance here and the availability of so much good local produce is enough for me to dream up the best way to enjoy them, I made these pies in miniature form so each could have their individual pie with clotted cream or Ice cream as they wished.The shortcrust pastry is the easiest you can come across and very good to work with, I chanced upon the recipe at BBCgoodfood.com and it can be found here.

I baked the individual pastry cases in a muffin pan, so that I could have six at one go, the texture of the pastry is very tender, buttery and flaky, the filling is sweet apples doused in a buttery cinnamon syrup, the end result is truly warming, very decadent and rich, with a wonderful sticky crunch to it that comes with the addition of raisins and nuts.To make these mini apple pies you require-

• Shortcrust pastry- 1 recipe, (can be found here alongwith video pictorial).


• Apples-3


• Sugar-1/2 cup


• Butter-1 large knob


• Nuts-1/4 cup


• Raisins-1/4 cup


• Cinnamon-1/4 tsp


• Preserve of choice-2 tbsp (preferably peach)

Assemble shortcrust pastry first acc. to recipe, roll out into small rounds that fit into a muffin tray, make six of these and press down carefully into pan like in the below pic, dip a fork in flour and press down edges to give a neat look, bake till slightly golden, don't forget to reserve some dough for trimmings on top, keep aside.

To prepare filling-Peel and core apples, dice.In a heavy bottom sauce pan combine all the ingredients for the filling except preserve and add 1/2 cup water, cook on slow flame till apples are tender, about 15 minutes, and there's only a little thick sugar syrup left, keep aside.To assemble, brush the insides of all pastry cases with preserve this is required to prevent pastry from getting soggy, spoon in prepared filling and roll out reserved dough into strips, place in lattice shape on top, brush with egg wash and bake till golden at 180 C, in a pre heated oven, Serve warm dusted with castor sugar and more ground cinnamon.

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