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Individual Apple Pies

If you make an apple pie in say a 22cm pie dish you will end up with 8 - 12 portions, depending on how much apple filling you use. If you are cooking for one or two people it means you will be eating apple pie for a number of days and cut apple pie doesn’t freeze too well. It is not much more trouble to bake individual pies in a muffin pan with approximately 9cm diameters and then the leftover pies can be frozen to be eaten later. I used the shortcrust pastry recipe from the Seniors in the Kitchen recipe file but with a little sugar added. This recipe calls for the apple to be slightly cooked before finally ending up as pie filling.
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Servings: 4 servings
Course: Dessert
Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • 220 g plain flour
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 115 g unsalted butter cubed and well chilled
  • 2 tsp caster sugar
  • 3 tbsp chilled water plus a little more
  • 800 g Granny Smith Apples
  • ¼ cup brown sugar
  • ¼ pure maple syrup
  • ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tsp unsalted butter, extra
  • 1 egg beaten

Method
 

  1. Assemble all your ingredients
  2. Place the flour, sugar and salt in your processor and give it a quick pulse to mix
  3. Add the cubed butter and intermittently pulse the processor for about 30 seconds
  4. The mixture should look like course breadcrumbs
  5. Add the 3 tbsp of chilled water. Process again for up to 10 seconds
  6. There should be some change, but it won’t look like a ball of dough yet
  7. With your fingers see if the mixture comes together. If not add a little more iced water and give it a quick pulse
  8. Turn the mixture out and quickly work into a ball
  9. Wrap the pastry in plastic wrap and chill for one hour
For the apple filling:
  1. Assemble ingredients
  2. Peel and core the apples
  3. Halve the apples and cut into 6mm slices
  4. Place the sliced apple, brown sugar, maple syrup, salt and cinnamon in a bowl and mix well
  5. Let the apple stand for 15 minutes
  6. Pre heat your oven to 170c
  7. Spread a single layer of apple and liquid on one or two baking sheets and bake for 15 - 30 minutes until tender, but not mushy
  8. When the apple is ready, remove from the oven and cool the apple. Drain any juice into a small saucepan
  9. Add the extra butter to the juice and gently reduce the liquid to a syrupy consistency before cooling to room temperature
Assembling the pies:
  1. Remove the pastry from the refrigerator
  2. Roll out the pastry to 3 mm thick
  3. Cut four (oversized) rounds of pastry for the pie bottoms. Retain the scraps of pastry in a ball
  4. Spray the muffin pan with cooking spray
  5. Line the muffin pans – gently pushing the pastry into the bottom corners
  6. Gently prick the pastry base
  7. Line each one with baking paper and pastry weights
  8. Bake for 25 minutes before removing the paper and weights
  9. Paint the inside of the pastry with beaten egg before returning the pastry to the oven for a further 5 minutes
  10. Remove the pastry shells from the oven and cool slightly
  11. Roll out the remaining pastry and cut four tops
  12. Fill the pastry shells with a generous amount of apple and divide the apple syrup evenly over the apple
  13. Gently paint the rim of the pastry shells and press down the pastry tops
  14. Paint the pastry tops with beaten egg and cut a couple of breathing holes in each of the pies
  15. Bake the pies in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown
  16. When ready let the pies stand for 10 minutes
  17. Serve with vanilla ice cream or individually chill, wrap and freeze

Notes

Alternative flavour variations include a mix or ground cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg or a little grated lemon zest