Apple Lattice Pie with Thermomix France Shortcrust Pastry
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you’ll know that my Mom made the world’s best apple pie. OK, I’ll make an exception for your Mom and once again we’ll agree that all our Moms make the world’s best apple pie. Most of the time Mom made a solid shortcrust top, but every now and then she would wow us with a lattice top. We loved this. It was even more beautiful because the pie juices bubbled up and left gooey, delicious speckles on the lattice itself. There was a little less crust to eat but what we did eat was über tasty, crisp and gorgeous!
I have recently learned from Thermomix France a new method for making shortcrust pastry that, if you can believe it, is even faster and easier than Thermomix UK Director Janie Turner’s method from Fast and Easy Cooking. It’s so utterly and beautifully simple that even I, Madame Thermomix, one of the world’s laziest cooks, make my own shortcrust pastry all the time now. So will you once you’ve tried this method!
THERMOMIX FRANCE SHORTCRUST PASTRY (PÂTE BRISÉE)
Makes enough crust for a 10-inch, 2-crust pie. Easily halved or doubled. Freezes beautifully, too, so if you’re making a one-crust tart go ahead and make the whole recipe and pop the rest in the freezer for next time. So fast and easy – and tasty – you’ll never be tempted to buy a store-bought crust again!
Ingredients (see below for alternative quantities and proportions)
330 g plain flour
120 g butter (salted or unsalted, as you prefer)*
1 MC of water, i.e. 100 g**
a pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter)
Method
- Weigh flour and butter into TM bowl. Mix 1 second on Turbo; repeat twice for a total of 3 x 1-second Turbo pulses.
- Add one Measuring Cup of water (100 g) and a good pinch of salt. Knead 30 seconds to 1 minute*** on kneading/interval function.
That’s it! Chill for a bit while you prepare your filling, roll out, season, decorate, bake. Done.
Madame Thermomix’s Top Tips:
*No need to dice the butter, no need to freeze it. Trust your Thermomix and add the butter in one big lump, straight from the fridge. The Turbo function makes beautiful crumb-sized bits in just 3 seconds! How’s that for both saving time and for last-minute, I-must-make-some-pastry decisions?
**Did you realize that your Measuring Cup is so aptly named because you can use it to measure out 50 g/50 ml or 100 g/100 ml of liquid? See my earlier post for more on the oh-so-clever MC,
***I find that one minute of kneading makes for a slightly hard pastry. Try kneading for just 30 seconds and let me know how your pastry turns out. Is it nice and flaky?
Variations on quantities for a one-crust pie or for flakier pastry
As with any recipe, there are thousands of variants on quantities and proportions, so take your pick!
Here are some examples:
| For a one-crust pie or tart, use | For a flakier two-crust pie, use | |
| butter | 115 g | 150 g |
| plain flour | 230 g | 300 g |
| fine sea salt | 1/2 tsp. | 1 tsp. |
| water | 75 g | 100 g |
And if you’ve never done it before, here’s a little pictorial lesson on making a lattice top for your pie or tart.
- Start by determining how many apples to use in any tart or pie tin. Simply fill the recipient with whole apples and bingo! That’s how many you’ll need. You’ll find this rule of thumb very handy and when they are peeled and prepared, your apples will fit perfectly into your tin.
- The Thermomix France Shortcrust Pastry recipe makes enough pastry for both the top and bottom of your Apple Lattice Pie. Divide the chilled dough in half and roll out your top and bottom crusts. Use your pie tin as a size guide; your crust should be 2 to 3 inches/5 to 7 cm more in diameter than the top lip of your tin or pan. Using a knife and any sort of clean straight edge (I used my rolling pin – less washing up that way!) cut the top crust into strips about 1 cm/half inch wide.
- Line the bottom of your tin and fill with your chosen filling. For a really tasty apple pie, dot with butter at this stage.
- Lay half your strips in one direction on top of your filled bottom crust. Then lay one strip at a time in the opposite direction (at a 90 degree angle) and weave over and under the bottom layer.
- Continue weaving the new strips over and under the bottom layer.
- Here our tart is completely covered in a lovely lattice design.
- Crimp the two crusts together using either your thumb and forefingers or a fork. This not only looks pretty, it holds the crusts together, too.
- Oops! I forgot to add my dots of butter in step 3 so I added them here.
- Bake your lattice pie as usual. Here’s my beauty! Care to join me for a slice?
For a more complete apple pie recipe, see my original post on Mom’s Apple Pie.
Post your photos of your Mom’s Apple Pie on my Facebook page!
Bon appétit !
sending you email with the deets of my TM story! 🙂
Wow, Tanya, you sure are thorough and I love hearing from you! I had no idea you were using American all-purpose flour, which is indeed quite different from French T55 flour. I also didn’t realise how much of a difference a different flour would make. Thank you so much for your research and for sharing your results. I’m so pleased 🙂
Also, I take it you’re somewhere in the USA? How and when did you get your Thermomix? I understand the new TM5 is available now in the US (see link below to the lovely Helene Meurer’s Super Kitchen Machine website). I’d love to hear more about your Thermomix journey!
http://www.superkitchenmachine.com/new-thermomix-tm5/where-to-buy-thermomix/usa
Hi Madame Thermomix! It’s Tanya back with an update. (Definitely spent way too much time these past two days thinking about pie crust…) Anyway, I figured that part of the problem with my first attempt at the crust was not just the ratio of the flour to butter, but the flour itself. I did a bit of internet research and discovered that American all-purpose flour is quite different from French T55 flour, so I ended up not using the proportions from a French recipe and going with a 3-2-1 ratio by weight of flour, fat, and water for my pie crust. (Michael Ruhlman writes about it in his book Ratio.) For my fat, I used 2/3 butter and 1/3 lard. I used the Thermomix method you write about in this post, shortening the turbo and kneading times to make up for a smaller batch. It was a fairly soft dough, so I let it chill for a couple of hours before rolling it out. The pie crust turned out amazing and with such little effort from me. Thank you, thank you for your inspiration and help! I love coming to your blog for ideas and recipes. Have a great day!
Thanks for the additional recipe and proportions, Tanya! I’m sorry your pastry came out hard and as per my other comments, I think it is because the smaller quantity of pastry was overmixed.
The TM31 user who posted the recipe you quote has also posted smaller proportions which should make one large pie crust:
115g butter
230g flour
1/2 tsp salt
75g water
I haven’t yet tried these proportions but they look good, and they use the 1:2 proportions of butter:flour as in the 2-crust quantity. Just as with any recipe, there are thousands of variants on the pâte brisée/shortcrust recipe so take your pick! As you say, the method is the same and it’s ultra simple.
Happy Thermomix cooking and thanks for keeping us up to date. Let us know how you get on with these latest quantities 😉
Hi Madame Thermomix, I so appreciate your helpful comments. Here is how my crust turned out, which I had baked before I got your comments. I used the shortcrust pastry from this blog, but just half the recipe. I chilled it in the fridge while I made the filling for my apple pie (using your mom’s delicious recipe!). The crust rolled out like a dream. I baked the pie and it was when I first tasted it that I discovered that the crust was hard, not so hard that you couldn’t bite through it, but definitely not flaky. For the next time, I may try the proportions from this Thermomix pâte brisée recipe: http://www.espace-recettes.fr/recettes/10453/pate-brisee-thermomix.html , which has 300 g flour to 150 g butter. The method looks the same! I’ll keep you posted. Thanks again for all your help. 🙂
Another great question and comment, Tanya, many thanks for joining the conversation.
Now that you’ve undoubtedly made your crust while I was asleep here in France, I’d love to know which method you chose and what your result was.
I surmise that both would work.
Of course, the other solution is to make the whole French recipe and freeze the half you don’t use! That way you’ll have enough pastry for one crust in your freezer, just waiting for your next pie 😉
Happy Thermomix cooking!
Hey, Tanya, glad you’re trying out different recipes on Why is There Air, and sorry if your crusty is already done by the time I reply – there’s a 9-hour difference between France and Australia 😉
For half a recipe quantity I think you should reduce the Turbo pulses to either 3 x 0.5 seconds (TM5) or maybe 1 x 1 second, or 2 or 3 really short bursts on the TM31. Stop when you get to the breadcrumb-looking stage. Then knead for 30 seconds as I doubt anything less would do much, but watch your pastry and stop when it looks “right.”
Over-kneading will make the pastry hard, as I find with the original Thermomix France recipe (“I find that one minute of kneading makes for a slightly hard pastry. Try kneading for just 30 seconds…”).
And then again, what French Thermomix Advisors do during the basic demo is to make the whole recipe and put half of it into the freezer for another time 😉
Madame Thermomix, it’s me again. I’ve been comparing the butter to flour ratio of this recipe to traditional American pice crust recipes and it looks like the American recipes have a lot more butter to flour. Do you think I could use these same instructions and just increase the butter, or should I use the other pie crust recipe on your site which has a higher butter to flour ratio but is a little more complicated. Thanks!
I loved how easy it was to make the crust. Unfortunately, my crust turned out a bit hard. I halved the recipe, turbo 3×1 seconds, add water and then 30 seconds on knead setting. Any suggestions? Should I have reduce the knead time even further since I was making a half recipe. I really want to make this work! Thanks in advance!
Thanks for your comment, Richard, and for letting us know that – yup – your Mum’s apple pie was the best, too! I have to agree that restaurant apple pies can never come up to scratch so that’s why I make my own. Give yours a whirl and let us know how you get on!
You guessed it my Mum’s apple pie truly was the best, made with apples from our own apple tree, bring’s me back, I certainly miss it now. Any restaurant’s apple pie certainly can’t compare but I will keep on searching can’t resist any dessert with apples in it.