Dutch traditional apple pie/Oma’s klassieke appeltaart – Susanne’s way

This recipe is one of the most common home-made traditional cakes in The Netherlands. The recipe is a family tradition passed on from one generation to the next one. Probably each family has its own version…and they are all nice! This is Tim’s sister Susanne’s own version. It is served mainly with coffee during weekends as a ‘Sunday treat’ for the greedy ones among them.

Difficulty:  Time: 

INGREDIENTS (x 12 persons)

For the dough

• - 300 g notnon-raising plain flour (‘00’)
• - 175 g unsalted cold butter, diced
• - 150 g caster sugar
• - 1/2 egg
• - 1/2 organic lemon zest
• - 1 pinch salt

For the filling

• - 3 ‘Granny Smith’ apples
• - 4 ‘Braeburn’ apples
• - 50 g raisins (optional)
• - 1 teaspoon ‘Speculaas’ spices (or cinnamon only)
• - 50 g of caster sugar
• - 4 tablespoons ‘Griesmeel pudding –Vanille’

WHAT TO DO:

For the dough

• 1. Wisk the egg with a fork in a small bowl.
• 2. In a Kitchen Aid mix the flour with a pinch of salt, the sugar, the cold-diced butter and ½ egg. Keep the rest of the egg for later. Mix until the dough turns into a uniform mix.
• 3. Finish working the dough with your hands on a flat, clean surface.
• 4. Then make a ball out of the dough and wrap it in a foil paper to rest into the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
• 5. In the meanwhile get ready for the filling.

For the filling

• 1. Peel the apples and cut in small pieces.
• 2. In a large bowl, mix the apples with the raisins, the spices, the sugar and 2 tablespoons of the vanilla pudding.
• 3. Pre-heat the oven at 180°C, not ventilated.

For the pie

• 1. Take the pastry dough out of the fridge.
• 2. With a rolling pin, stretch out 2/3 of the dough on a 26 cm baking pan, making high borders in order to cover up the entire pan.
• 3. Sprinkle the bottom with 2 tablespoons of vanilla pudding and pour the apples mix.
• 4. Cover the pie with dough stripes you can make out from the remaining 1/3 of the dough. Cross the stripes to make a kind of a grid.
• 5. With the left over egg glow the stripes using a brush for cooking.
• 6. Let it bake for 1h and 15 minutes in the pre-heated oven. Enjoy! (eet smakelijk!)

TIPS & TRICKS

• - This recipe comes out very nicely by mixing the two different types of apples in this proportion. Granny Smith apples are firm with strong tartness resembling that of a lemon. Braeburn apples have a robust spicy-sweet flavour with a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon — they are excellent for apple pies. If not available in your area, try to have a quality that resembles these two different apples

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• - The ‘Speculaas’ spices are very popular in the north of Europe to make cakes, biscuits or traditional pastries for winter celebrations, such as Santa Claus. If not available where you live, use cinnamon only. If you wish to make your own home made powder, you can mix (Dutch recipe):

- 20g cinnamon
- 10g nutmeg
- 5g cloves
- 1 pinch cardamom

• -  The ‘Griesmeel pudding –Vanille’ is a ready-made pudding powder, commercially available everywhere in the Netherlands. In other countries, you can substitute it with another similar pudding or with the powder to make the custard cream. If not found with the Vanille flavour, add to the filling mix a bag of vanilla extract in powder.
• - This pie can be served warm together with whipped cream or vanilla ice-cream.