Easy Apple Shortcake

Ingredients

For the pastry: 

• 125g cold butter, chopped
• 1/3 cup caster sugar + 1 tbsp extra
•  2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg + 1 egg white

For the filling: 

• 6-8 apples
• 2 tbsp water
• A squeeze of lemon
• A sprinkle of cinnamon
• 1-2 tablespoons of brown sugar( depending on apple tartness)

Method:

1.    Make apple filling. Peel, core & slice and cook in med saucepan with water & lemon until soft enough. Drain and stir through brown sugar and cinnamon. Leave to cool (Pastry Equation #1: ‘hot filling + cool pastry = doughy mess’).

2.    Chuck the pastry ingredients into food processor and pulse until it looks fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg (not the extra white) and pulse until it comes together into an ungainly ball. Split into two, wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180 deg or 170 fan bake. Grease and line base of a shallow tin - I use a 29cm x 22cm sponge roll tin that I nicked from Mum (baking tins from mothers are the best!)

3.    Roll out pastry on a floured surface (a flexible plastic/silicone baking sheet is the way to go, you can pick up the whole sheet and upside down it into a tin or over top for the lid). (Pastry Equation #2: ‘pastry + flexi sheet = easy peasy no grumpy’). Line tin, prick all over with a fork and paint pastry with egg white.

4.   Spread the filling over the pastry-lined tin. Roll out the rest of pastry for the lid and flip it on top. Trim, crimp edges together with fork and cut a few steam holes. Paint with more egg white and sprinkle with the extra sugar.

5.    Bake until golden (30-40 mins or until you get sick of the kids asking if it's ready yet).

Slice it into big chunks and serve it warm with a dollop of ice cream or Chantilly cream. If you have kids that eat like mine, the lot will be vacuumed in short order.