"A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie"
- Tenneva Jordan
A couple of things that are useful to know.
WHOLE NUT - COURSE FLOUR - FINE FLOUR - BUTTER
When nuts are put in a blender, the longer amount of time the nuts are left blending, they more they change state.
So taking almonds as an example; 100g of almonds yields 1 cup of almond flour. If your looking for course flour blend for 60 to 90 seconds. For fine almond flour this may take 2-3 minutes. It also depends on how powerful your blender is. I find using the 'S' shape blade creates the best results. Blending the fine almond flour for a further 9-10 minutes will finally create almond butter. I know when actually doing this it almost seems as if your never going to get to the almond butter stage, but trust me you'll get there, don't give up.
This theory can be put to basically every nut. The softer nuts like cashews and peanuts take a considerably less amount of time than the harder nuts like brazil nuts and almonds.
- 2 cups almond flour (made with 210grams of almonds)
- 1/3 cup medium desiccated coconut
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon powdered gelatin
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 large egg yolk
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 4-5 Pink Lady apples, cored and each half cut into 5-6 pieces
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/8 tsp sea salt
- 1 cup almond flour
- 2 tbsp desiccated coconut
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- Firstly pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius .
- Start by making your almond flour. Measure out 200g of almonds and place in a blender.
- It is up to you how fine you would like your flour, I prefer having it fairly course, it gives the pastry a crunchier texture.
- Add the coconut, salt and powdered gelatin to the blender and pulse just to make sure every thing is incorporated.
- Transfer the dry mix to a bowl and add your egg yolk and butter.
- Use your fingers to rub the butter in the the flour with the egg yolk.
- You should be looking for a sandy consistency that comes together when pressed with your hands.
- Pour the mixture out on to a large piece of cling film and shape into a disk.
- Wrap it up and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. While the pastry is chilling you can get on with your filling.
Gently lift up the cling film with your pie dough on top, quickly fold it on top of the pie dish and using your fingers and the cling film, press the bottom and the sides of the dough securely to the pie dish.
Cut off any stragglers that are hanging over the edges.
Get a sheet of greece proof paper and place this on top of the pie dough.
Fill the pie dish with baking beads. I find ceramic work best as this distributes the heat evenly, whilst weighing down the dough.
Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until the sides of the pastry start to brown.
Take the half cooked dough out of the oven, remove the greece proof paper and the ceramic baking beads and cook for another 7 minutes, this will just secure that the pastry is fully cooked, and prevent a soggy base!
- Slice your apples in half and cut each half into 4 or 5 slices. This is the correct size for an apple thats quite soft with just a little bit of bite.
- Place the apple in a heavy saucepan on medium heat.
- Add the butter and brown sugar to the sauce pan. Make sure all the apple is coated.
- Cook for 5-7 minutes until the apples just beings to soften.
- A lovely juice should have formed at the bottom of the saucepan.
- Coarsely chop the walnuts and add with the cinnamon, cranberries and vanilla.
- You can optionally add honey for an added bit of sweetness.
- Cook for a further 5 minutes.
- Take off heat and allow stand while you prepare the crumb topping.
- Make almond flour in same way as mentioned above.
- Add desiccated coconut, vanilla, brown sugar and butter to the blender.
- Pulse until everything comes together, this should happen fairly quickly.
- Add all the filling with the delicious sweet juices that accompany it to the half baked pastry base.
- Crumble the topping evenly over the apples.
- Place in the middle of your oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.
- This may need more time depending on how hard your apples were going in. So, to check, simply put a knife through the crumble and apples and feel if the desired texture is reached.