Week 5: Apple Passion Fruit Pie

This week, we're again cooking with passion fruit (I'm really, really happy passion fruit was added to the game, can you tell?). We're making an apple-passion fruit pie:

This is great if you want to make apple pie that's just a bit different. It's more of a tart, really, though to be honest I'm not too clear on the difference in English between pie, tart and flan. Love passion fruit, but don't want all those black pips in your pie? Put the passion fruit pulp in a food processor and pulse a few times, then press it through a sieve. The pulp will have detached from the pips.

 

Apple-passionfruit pie

Ingredients:

225 g plain flour
100 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
50 g Demerara sugar
2 tblsp water + more as needed
1 kilo apples - I used Goudreinet, any slightly tart apple suitable for making apple sauce will do
4 passion fruits
125 g caster sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of salt

 

Sift the flour and Demerara sugar in a bowl. Add a pinch of salt. Add the butter and 2 tblsp of water and knead to a firm dough. If the mixture is too dry and won't come together, add some more water (but be careful not to make it too wet!). Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Peel the apples, quarter and remove the cores. Slice into thick slices, then cut those into chunks. Put the apples, caster sugar and cinnamon in a pot and place on a medium heat. When the apples start losing moisture, which bubbles at the bottom of the pot, turn the heat down to low and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Drain the apple mixture.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Centigrade. Roll out the dough until it is large enough to cover a [X] cm pastry tin. Don't forget to butter the tin! Place the dough in the tin and chill for another 20-30 minutes, or 10 minutes in the freezer. Take the tin out of the fridge/freezer, cut off the excess dough, and prick the bottom a few times with a fork. Place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes.
Scoop the pulp out of the passion fruits and mix it with the apple. Take the pastry out of the oven and fill with the fruit mixture. Cover with aluminium foil, reduce the heat to 180 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the aluminium foil and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Let cool in the tin for half an hour before cutting, to allow it some time to get firm.

Tip: Replace 25 g of the caster sugar by passion fruit infused sugar.