From My Kitchen

This recipe should probably come with a health warning! It’s both dangerously full of all the really good (AKA really bad for you) stuff, and once you’ve got your head around that you’ll find that the salted caramel is rather addictive. On top of that, it’s difficult to make salted caramel in a smaller quantity, so you’re stuck with a little more than a jam jar full which will eventually need eating. Oops. This time even I don’t think that the kilo of apples actually balances that out!

Ingredients

Apple pie:

1kg cooking apples

1/2 a lemon

125g butter

125g caster sugar (+ extra for sprinkling)

1 pack shortcrust pastry

1 egg

Salted caramel:

250g caster sugar

50g butter

150ml double cream

1 tsp sea salt flakes

Method

Apple pie:

1. Heat the oven to 180C.
2. Peel and core the apples and cut into 2-3cm chunks and fling them into your chosen pie dish – squeeze over a little lemon juice & toss to cover, to stop them from turning brown (that happens remarkably quickly).
3. Melt the butter in a pan or microwave, and mix in the sugar. Pour over the apples and mix well.
4. Dust a board with flour and roll out the pastry to around 5mm thick.
5. Brush the edges of your pie dish with beaten egg, then roll your pastry around your rolling pin (kind of flop it over the rolling pin), and unroll (unflop?) it over the apples.
6. Press down / make pretty patterns around the edge with the tines of a fork, cut off any excess, and brush over the top of the pie with beaten egg.
7. Sprinkle over some additional caster sugar, poke a hole in the centre to allow steam to escape, and chuck it in the oven for 45 mins until golden.
8. Let it cool a bit before you eat it, it’s better warn rather than volcanically hot. Cream or icecream or custard are needed at this point.

Salted caramel:

1. Put the sugar in a heavy bottomed frying pan with 4tbsp water and give it a good stir.
2. Place onto a medium heat and DO NOT STIR IT ANY MORE (at least until step 4).
3. Leave well alone while it bubbles away and the sugar dissolves, then let it bubble for a good 5 minutes until it’s a beautiful golden caramel colour.
4. Remove from the heat and slowly pour in the cream and butter, stirring gently until all combined.
5. Stir in the salt to taste.