Does anyone make an amazing apple pie?

[Emilygilmoreshandbag]

I want to learn to make an apple pie with tonnes of flavour, no soggy bottom, crisp golden pastry. Can anyone help?
Last time I made apple pies they were a soggy mess. I’d particularly love a recipe that freezes, as my trees are groaning under the weight of their apples and apart from pressing a load I’d love to have a freezer full of delicious puddings to see us through winter.
(I’ve also got a couple of kilos of blackberries in the freezer, and will shortly have surplus damsons and elderberries, so variations on a pie theme also welcome!)

Thank you!

Butter and lard for the pastry gives the best texture.
Placing the tin on a metal baking tray helps a bit with the soggy bottom.
An apple and custard tart is in some ways easier because you can blind bake the base.

Could you make batches of apple pie filling which you freeze down ready to make pies or crumble as desired?

There is a difference between a soggy bottom and an uncooked bottom, unless you have a very dry as in not juicy tart it's impossible to keep the bottom pastry crisp but that doesn't mean it's uncooked, it just gets saturated with the juice when the tart sits after coming out of the oven. For the same reason I don't think they freeze great, better frozen unbaked and then bake as needed but ice crystals form in the gaps between the apples eventually so don't keep too long.

I use a basic shortcrust pastry and keep the tarts low down in oven to ensure bottom gets plenty of heat but I'm afraid I like a juicy tart so do not precook the apples and don't get bothered by the bottom (cooked) pastry getting soggy from the juice settling after baking.

For the bulk of the apples on my tree I just stew them and freeze in that form but wouldn't use that for tarts in winter, fine for a quick crumble with premade cooked crumble sprinkled on top or lovely mixed with whipped cream as a cake/swiss roll filling, I also use apple puree in ginger cakes and of course for the usual apple sauce with pork.

I use the recipe by Preppy Kitchen and it's fantastic!

You could lay your sliced apples out on kitchen roll for awhile and this would take away some of the moisture which leads to a soggy bottom. The thing you could try is mixing in a tablespoon of cornflour with your apples and sugar.

I use sweet pastry (but only a level tbsp sugar in the pastry and I slice the fruit finely but I don’t pre-stew it. Easy!