American as Apple Pie?

Well, I wouldn't say so in this case since this Individual Apple Pie recipe is from Nigella Lawson's Feast. First off, it's not your typical apple pie crust as she uses sour cream and cream cheese in the pastry dough. Yes, pastry, not pie dough. Sounds tasty being called pastry instead of pie dough, right? Like using French terms to name a dish. Well, I had way too much leftover dough so I cut them up and slapped some jam between two slices to make "cookies" out of them. Alas, they tasted very bland which was surprising as I've made similar cream cheese/sour cream type of doughs that turned out delicious. Uh oh...I hope the pies will be fine...

So this pastry dough not only tasted underwhelming, it gave me a lot of work to do! I had to make the dough twice because her instructions sucked. It never came together into a "silky dough" as she puts it so I overprocessed it (I wasn't surprised). Plus, she never tells you to flour the work surface so it stuck like mad. I always follow her instructions since she can be quite specific. Plus, there's a difference between heavily and lightly flour. I've done doughs that really didn't need any flour. So, I listened to her. Stupid me! I wasted a batch of dough for nothing! And let's not include the time! And my frustration! To add to all this, she never tells you to add water to the egg to make an egg wash. I completely forgot about adding water until I tried slathering it on. Ugh!

Since Easter is around the corner, I decided to decorate the tops with little bunnies. That was the only good part. Upon eating the pie, it wasn't great. The crust was too thick in the mouth which turned it into a blockage of sorts by sticking to my mouth and being paste-like. The apples weren't very fragrant despite the cinnamon and clove. The bunnies were tasty because they were nice and hard (and thus almost flaky from the fat content). Otherwise, this was a total waste of time. I was wholly disappointed. No one liked it. =( The only positive comments were a) the crunchy bunnies and b) the crust tasted buttery. This one definitely looks better than it tastes.