Who says men can't bake?!

I know, a bit of a sweeping statement, and if you look at the blogs out there it's definitely not true. But when I was growing up, my friends were always very surprised that my dad would regularly cook or even bake. He has a limited repertoire of his personal favourites that he makes extremely well so you always know (roughly) what you'll get but also always that it will be very good.

So what brought this post on? After Myriam's recent post about Amsterdam, we were discussing Dutch apple pie and I said my dad had a very nice recipe and I could share it with her. When I came back home to look for it, I realized I'd never written it down!! I know I attempted it several times when visiting home but of course always last minute before leaving to the airport and so was promised an email that never came ;-) To sort this out I phoned my dad last Monday and he promised to send it and a photograph as well. When he couldn't find this he decided to bake one for the occasion and take pictures "blog style"! I thought this was very sweet and definitely deserved a guest appearance here. Enjoy!

Henk's Dutch apple pie
-For the dough
250g flour
175g butter
80g sugar
2 eggs
-For the filling
about 750g apples (Boskop, Elstar or something firmish)
100g sugar
100g raisins/sultanas
cinnamon
30g shaved almonds
rind of 1 lemon

Mix butter, flour, sugar and 1 1/2 eggs to a firm dough. Leave to rest in the fridge 30 min. In the mean time, peel the apples, cut into chunks and mix them with the rest of the ingredients for the filling.

Roll out the dough, grease a high walled tin (10 inch/25 cm diameter) and cover it with the dough, cut off the overhanging bits and re-roll to use them later for the decoration on top. Fill the pastry with the apple mix, Add the lattice work (optional) and coat this with the leftover egg. Bake at 180°C for 60 min. Leave to cool slightly and serve with whipped cream.