For the second time, I was asked to participate in the wonderful creatives calendar organised by Gina from Willowday (check her amazing floral creations and art) on instagram and my turn is today! Wishing all the ones celebrating Christmas today a very merry one and for the others also why not try that pie recipe, using all the cookie cutters you made gingerbread cookies with before putting them away until next year?
For the pastry, I used the recipe and tutorials from my favourite Linda Lomelino, call me cupcake. I changed a bit the filling that way:
APPLE and PEAR FILLING
35 g (1/4 cup) all purpose flour
90 g (1/3 cup + 1 1/2 tbsp) granulated sugar
50 g (1/4 cup) brown sugar, tightly packed
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground ginger
pinch of ground cloves
pinch of grated nutmeg
1.2 kg (2.6 lbs) firm apples and pears (about 3 pears and 3 apples large)
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 tbsp. fresh orange juice
And once you have done the crust the way you want (or follow’s Linda’s instructions they are brilliant), here is how I did the filling:
Peel, core and slice the apples. and pears. You must slice them very thinly. Place them in a large bowl and add the orange zest, juice and flour mixture. Gently toss to combine.
When removing the rolled out pie dough, both bottom and top layer, from the fridge, pour the apple and pear filling into the pie dish a third at a time to flatten each layers and make sure it is firmly packed in the end.
For the rest, follow the instructions in this blog post, it’s the best I have tried so far. There is plenty of ideas in this one on how to decorate the pie. I used the cookie cutters I used for the Christmas cookies I did this year and created a winter wonderland one.
The filling really gives a taste of winter warmth and it’s delicious with a nice green or white tea.
I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you had a look around all the other creatives who participated in this calendar.
And as usual, a lot of outtakes below:
