Saturday 12 August 2017

Rosemary Apple Pie/Crumble

After many months since last posting (oops) I thought I would resurrect this blog with some baked goods. Below you will find a recipe for a delicious rosemary-apple pie/crumble.


It is a great way of using rosemary in a dessert to spice (herb?) it up! But because both the rosemary and the apples I used were foraged, let me give a bit of context to that.

Three things you might already know about me:
1. I love being outside
2. I hate wasting things, or seeing wasted items
3. I find satisfaction in creating good things on minimal budgets
Add all this together and you have a pretty good combination leaning towards food foraging.



My friend took this photo today while we were foraging blackberries to make yet another crumble


I also take glee in being somewhat mischevious, and so when my former neighbours emailed me last weekend to ask if I wanted to join them in sneakily picking some apples from the back garden of my old house, the answer was an automatic yes. Together, we went into the abandoned garden and picked a large bag of apples. That same afternoon, on my way home, with my apples in tow, I grabbed a few handfuls of fresh rosemary from a rosemary bush that was taking over the public bike path. (At that particular moment, I had not yet planned this dessert.) And to top it all off I also passed a big bin of apples that people were giving away, and so I added a couple of those to my pile. 





The next day, I decided to try mixing the rosemary and apples into a pie or crumble. I used this recipe (http://mysecondbreakfast.com/rosemary-apple-pie-recipe/) as my model, though I modified it a little bit. I'd recommend looking at the recipe link if you want more specific instructions!


Step 1: The pie crust
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon rosemary, chopped finely
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter (cut into thin cubes)
~5 tablespoons of cold soy milk

Mix in order given, cutting the butter in with a pastry cutter, fork, or clean fingers. Before adding the milk, your pastry should have the texture of wet, coarse sand. Add the milk slowly, and once it holds together when you pinch it between your fingers, don't add any more milk! (You could also use dairy milk; the original recipe calls for that, but I had soy milk on hand!)

Place the pastry in the fridge for a few hours before rolling it out. (I let mine sit overnight, since I might the pie crust at 9pm and didn’t want to wait up to bake.)
When you're ready to roll it out, if you're like me and you don’t have a rolling pin, you can use a clean wine bottle. :D 


Step 2: The Apples filling
- washed, (mostly) peeled, and sliced the apples until you have a big bowl of them
-flavour with cinnamon, the juice of half of lemon, a  dash of nutmeg, splash of vanilla extract, a crack of sea salt, and some sugar; toss it around in this mixture. 


Step 3: The topping
This is an alternative to topping it with another pie crust, though you'd be welcome to do that!
- 1 cup rolled oats
- 1/4 cup (30g) brown sugar (I used less)
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons rosemary, finely chopped
- 4 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter (I considered coconut oil for this, since that's what I normally would do for crumble, but I decided to not add in another flavour...maybe next time!)





You can either make a regular sized pie with this crust or you can do as I did and make little pies in muffin trays. 


I put some coconut oil on the muffin tins so that the crust did not stick, and then rolled it out with a wine bottle and cut it with a large beer glass I have on hand. (Hmmm. I didn’t notice all these alcohol usages before writing it out like this.)




I placed the circle cut outs in the muffin tins, filled it VERY HIGH with apples....






...and then put the crumble on top. :D

I topped it with a few pecan pieces and then put it in the oven. I baked it at 180 Celsius for about 20 minutes. 




They were delicious! They really held their shape and the pie crust was quite tasty, with the rosemary giving a nice flavour to all of it.  Voila!



Bon appétit!