Posts Tagged ‘pie’

Apple, Stilton and Caramelised Walnut Pie

Pie: A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients.

Where has this week gone? Time once again to link up to the fab #greatbloggersbakeoff. At times this week has seemed like the longest week ever what with a poorly 15 month old and then me catching it too. The four year old had only been going to school from 1pm until 3pm daily as part of his ridiculously long settling in period and this hasn’t been easy not least because by the time I got home and put little one down for his much needed nap I was waking him up to go back to school all over again. We didn’t want to venture out too far in the mornings (nearly didn’t make it back in time on Tuesday) and so spent quite a lot of time feeling sorry for ourselves at home. Pie making was not top of my list of activities whilst my stomach was churning, but by Friday I was feeling better, had a brand new oven, and was ready to bake!

So without further ado (or unnecessary waffling on about my week) here is my recipe! It went down quite well at home and has sparked a debate as to whether it is a savoury or sweet pie. I wanted to drizzle balsamic vinegar over a rocket salad to accompany it and my husband wanted to slather it in cream. You can make your own mind up!

Apple, Stilton and Caramelised Walnut Pie

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I started by making a basic shortcrust pastry…

Ingredients

250g plain flour
Pinch of salt
110g unsalted butter
2-3 tbsp cold water

Method

Put the flour and salt in a large bowl, add the butter and rub together with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. (I love doing this, reminds me of baking with my mum when I was a child!) Next add the water a bit at a time until the dough binds together. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 10-15mins.

Whilst the pastry was relaxing in my fridge I made the filling…

Ingredients

6 apples (dessert if possible, mine were from the tree in my garden and they are a bit tart!)
150g walnuts
100g golden caster sugar
A good big wedge of Stilton (sorry I didn’t weigh it I just crumbled it all in!)

Method

Peel the apples and cut into large chunks. Place in a saucepan with 2tbsp of water and cook on a low heat for 5-10 minutes. (they need to retain their shape) Put the sugar in a saucepan with 100ml of cold water. Bring to the boil and let it boil vigorously for 10 minutes. Then remove from the heat, add the walnuts and stir. I will warn you at this point that you may worry you’ve ruined a perfectly good saucepan as it will harden and appear impossible to remove. So…I solved this ptential nightmare by using a wooden spoon (not in frustrated anger!) and bashed them a bit until they were all nice crushed up, then they came out of the saucepan with no problem! Roll out half of the pastry into a circle and place in a greased pie dish. Put the apples on top so they cover the whole of the bottom. Next sprinkle the crushed caramelised walnuts over the apples and finally crumble the Stilton over everything. (I’m tempted, if I make this again, to add another layer of apples, but didn’t this time) Roll out the remaining pastry and place over the pie cutting a hole in the top to let the steam out as it cooks. Sprinkle with water and caster sugar and then place in an oven at 180 degrees for 35 minutes or until the top is nice and brown! (took a while for mine, but that could’ve been because it was a new oven and I’m not yet confident with timings!)

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And there you have it, not too tricky to make at all…and as you can see from the photos I went for the rustic look! I did toy with the idea of cutting out apple shaped pastry pieces to put on the top to make it look pretty, but didn’t have time this week.

Thank you, as always for reading and if you’d like to join in the link or read lots more yummy recipes then click on the badge below!

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