Butter free apple pie

Butter-free apple pie

Well, it’s the benginning of fall and we can start making the most of it by preparing good pies for our breakfast. Let us start the  new season with a light, butter-free but “rewarding” and easy to prepare apple pie!

This is  grandma Grazia’s apple pie recipie. She was not keen in using butter for her pies so she created  her own butter-free recipie. We are sure we did not catch all Grandma’s secrets to prepare this recipie but our version is certainly very similar to it and really tasty!

Ingredients
For the butter-free shortcrust pastry

300 g plain white flour
2 medium eggs, beaten
100 g granulated sugar
8 g backing powder
90 g olive oil (avoid extravergin olive oil for this recipe!)
half a lemon zest

For the filling

5 rennet apples peeled and cubed (380g)
125 g blueberries
1 level spoonful ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons Amaretto liqueur
2 tablespoons cane sugar
10 amaretti biscuits crumbled
a splash of milk to brush over the pastry
powdered sugar to taste

To prepare the pastry, start by sieving the flour into a medium bowl. Add the eggs, sugar, backing powder, oil and lemon zest. Energically mix to uniformly incorporate all the ingredients and shape the dough to form a ball. Cover the bowl with cling film. Let the dough rest in the fridge for at least one hour.

To prepare the filling, peel the apples, remove the core and dice them into roughly 1cm cubes . Set the apple cubes in a soucepan over medium-high heat  together with the Amaretto liqueur and sugar. Keep stirring for a couple of minutes. Ultimetely add the cinnamon. Mix thoroughly, remove from heat and let it cool completely.

Divide the pastry in half, making a half lightly larger than the other. Take the larger half and roll it out over a non-stick baking sheet previously dusted with flour so that it is big enough to cover an 24 cm pie plate (the pastry should be roughly half centimeter thick).  Evenly press the pie pastry into the pie tin. Trim away the excess pastry with a knife using the edge of the plate as your guide.

Cover the pastry with the crumbled amaretti biscuits. Top with the stewed apples and finish by evenly distributing the blueberries over the surface. Roll out the other half of the pastry. Moisten the edge of the bottom layer of pastry and place the second piece on top.

Press down on the pastry edges, making sure that they are properly sealed. Prick the surface of the pastry lightly with a fork  and brush it evenly with milk before placing the pie in the oven.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 °C for 45 minutes.
Slide on to a serving plate and let it cool. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

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