Corte di Gabriela in the kitchen: creamy apple pie

What is better than a pie with a steaming mug of tea to have a snack during winter afternoons? A creamy pie! Especially if it is made with apple, the fruit doing its best in this season.

At Hotel Corte di Gabriela we revisited the tradition recipe to put a personal touch, as in everything we do. And yummy first of all: a creamy heart. The preparation will take a little longer, but the final tasty result will reward you. The quantities shown below are fine for 8 people, because when you share it, happiness is multiplied…

Our recipe implies two distinct and complementary steps: the preparation of the pastry and the preparation of the filling, lasting about 30 minutes in all. Are you ready to cook? Be sure to have all the ingredients first.

Ingredients for the pastry:

330 g all-purpose flour

200 g butter

100 g sugar

1 egg-white

½ lemon

a pinch of salt

 Ingredients for the filling:

5 Rennette apples

100 ml water

100 g sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ lemon

10 g baker’s yeast

1 egg

The ingredients seem to be many, but the recipe is easier than you could imagine. So, let us start with the preparation of the creamy apple pie.

Put the flour on a wooden sheet, make a hole in the middle of it (the typical “fontana”) and add the sugar, the egg white and the grated lemon peel. Be careful during this phase, to avoid the leakage of ingredients. Start to mix, then add the butter (that you had previously softened at room temperature), a pinch of salt and go on kneading until a smooth and homogeneous ball.  Wrap it in a tea towel and leave to rest for at least 30 minutes.

Do not waste time now: the filling of our creamy pie is waiting for you! Peel carefully and cut the apples into thin slices. Let them cook in a very sweet syrup made of 100 ml water, 100 g sugar and the grated peel of an half lemon. When softened – and sweetened – blend the apples with a mixer.

To this point, you are ready for the creation of the creamy heart. Put the filling again on the fire for 2-3 minutes, leave it to rest just one minute and mix the egg, the cinnamon and the yeast. Can you smell it from there?!?

Let us come back to the pastry of the pie, which rested enough. Roll out it into a pan, previously greased and dusted with flour, paying attention to leave high the rims. Pour over the delicious apple sauce and bake at 180°. It only takes an hour of cooking to taste your pastry masterpiece…but let it cool a little bit.

A suggestion for gourmands, as us: you can garnish the pie with cinnamon-flavoured whipped cream, using a pastry bag. Remember to do it only when the apple pie has gone cold.

A mouth-watering prospect…