Apple pie with meringue

Apple pie with meringue 

I had the idea of making this pie watching a TV show on the Italian television. I change a little bit the recipe according what I had at home and also I had no quantities of the ingredients and I had to improvise. I love to improvise :)

Ingredients


puff paste
3 apples
80ml milk
80ml cream
raisins
rum
3 eggs
100g of sugar
cinnamon
1 lemon
4 spoons of water
pinch of salt


Procedure


Peel the apples and cut them in to small pieces, add some lemon juice, if not they will oxidise. Wash the raisins and soak in the rum, after 10 minutes or even better 30 minutes strain them and add it to the pieces apples.

In a container mix 80 ml of milk, 80 ml of cream and the 2 yolks and 1 egg.

Grease baking the tin or use some parchment paper, cover it with the puff paste (I bought it) and fill it with the apples, raisins and cover every thing with the cream of milk and cream.
Put in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes at 180 degrees.

Meringue


When the pie is in the oven we make the meringue from the 2 whites.

Put the 4 spoons of water and 100g of sugar in a pen and put in on a medium hit. The sugar will melt, cook for 5 minutes until the syrup will start to  thicken. If you take a small amount of the syrup it will be sticky. Caution, the syrup will be very hot!

In a bowl with the electric mixer beat the two egg whites and a pinch of salt until foamy. Slowly add the syrup while you are beeting the whites and continue to beat the whites until they hold soft peaks. Take the pie from the oven and put the meringue on it. I simply did this with a spoon. I prefer if the meringue is not uniform as you can see on the picture.

Bake the pie for another 20 - 25 minutes on 120 degrees and never exceed 150 degrees. After this the meringue will be dry and the pie will be ready.

Candied fruit, Glacé fruit

this is the first time that I try out this recipe. In Slovenia a typical cookies for Christmas are Medenjaki (cookies with honey) and the best Medenjaki are with candied fruit. I don't trust to buy them except if they are organic but I in Slovenia I never found them.

For this recipe I use the peel of organic lemon and orange. I made them using the short recipe, because I didn't have 3 days for the classic - long procedure.


Ingredients
10 organic oranges or lemon peel
sugar


Short procedure


I made the Candied fruit with the short procedure.
Cut the peel at julienne. We cook the peel in the boiling water for 2 minutes, wait until cool down. Change the water and re do the procedure for another 2 times.

We drain the peel and weight them. In a pot we prepare the syrup, we add the same weight of the peel of sugar and water in my case I had 100g of peels and I made the syrup of 100g sugar and 100g of water. Than we cook the peels in this syrup until is concentrate. In my case it takes 10 minutes, but you can add less water and it will be faster (as I did the second time I made them).

Important: 
- in this procedure you must be careful because the sugar must not became caramel.
- the temperature of the sugar is very high can be at 170 °C (340 °F) or higher. I don't allow any child to be near me when I'm cooking the syrup.

Procedure (long)


Cut the peel at julienne. Sock them for 3 days in the cold water, change the water 2 or 3 times every day. With this procedure the peel will loose the bitterness.

Candied orange peel. On the left are nice and I use it for decoration,
with the candied on the right I  made cookies.

In a large pot prepare the syrup, mix 200g of sugar and 100g of water. Cook the peel in the water and sugar for a few minutes. Than take them out and leave at room temperature to dry for 24 hours. Save the syrup, you will have to do this procedure another 2 times in the next 2 days. Every time dry the peel for 24 hours.

If we want to roll the peels in the granular sugar, we have to do it the last day. We cook the peel for the last time in the syrup, we leave them to dry. When they are almost dry, but still a little bit wet, we roll the in granular sugar.