Apple Pie

I rarely bake treats for home.

Except at Christmas time.
As I spend days every week baking for functions and my cafe clients, my dear little family makes do on left overs and slight rejects or poor deformed cookies that I can't justify charging money for.
Today is a new day! I decided to make some apple pies that we could all enjoy. I usually miss out, but not today.
I had heard from a few sources that Maggie Beer has a great pastry recipe using cream cheese. I was intrigued. I googled around a bit and came across a gluten free version here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/cookandchef/text/s1949896.htm

Despite the huge lactose content I decided to give it a try.
When I read the recipe through, I was surprised at the large amount of salt included. I think cream cheese has a salty undertone anyway, so I reduced the salt to 1 tsp, and maybe you could even halve that. I suppose it's a matter of taste.
This pastry is very soft, but this is good as you can press and mold it easily, but I wouldn't want to be doing this on a really hot day!

You need:

500g cream cheese

300g cold butter

4 cups of gfree flour

1tsp salt

8g xanthum gum

Now the easy part, chop the butter and cream cheese into cubes and pulse in the food processor.

Add in the flour, salt and gum, and pulse until crumby. Use a tablespoon of water or so if you need to.

It should start coming together easily.

Knead together into a smooth ball and rest in the fridge for a while.

I rolled the pastry out in between 2 sheets of baking paper to about 3mm thick. As I used a high, narrow tin it was a bit hard to fold the pastry into it neatly, but as it's soft it was easy to press out to the correct thickness.

The apple and pear filling I wanted to use has a nice bit of juiciness going on, and as there is nothing worse than a soggy bottom, I placed a teaspoon of almond meal in the bottom of each pie to soak up excess moisture.

Fill up the little lovelies, pop on the lids and crimp the edges together. I then I brushed the tops with water and sprinkled with raw sugar for a bit of sweet bling.

Bake at about 180* , and as they're pretty small I started checking at 20 minutes. I let them go to about 25mins or until the top was a lovely golden brown. Nice and tanned, no pasty pastry.

Let them cool in the pan for a little while, about 10 mins. You don't want them to sweat as that may damage the structural integrity of the pies, but if they're too hot when you try and remove them, they'll break up too. It's a fine line people. An easy solution would be to make a shallower pie, but I like these!

Enjoy hot or cold, they are yummy either way. I also tried heating them in the microwave the next day and they held up beautifully. The pastry didn't crumble, or get too tough. Yummo!

So Reader, do you often bake for your family?