Double-Crust Apple Pie

Rub the cold butter into the flour, the 20g of caster sugar and the fine salt with your fingertips, lifting the mixture high out of the bowl and letting it fall back so it stays cool.

Stop while flakes of butter the size of small peas are still visible. Those flakes turn to steam in the oven and lift the pastry into layers; rubbed down to fine crumbs, it bakes short and sandy with nothing to flake.

Pour in the 90ml of ice-cold water.

Cut it through with a table knife until the mixture clumps, then press it together with one hand until no dry flour is left.

Divide the dough into a larger piece of about 380g for the base and a smaller one for the lid.

Flatten both into discs, wrap them and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Toss both kinds of apple with the 100g of caster sugar, the cornflour, lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg until every chunk is coated.

Use both apples rather than one. Bramleys collapse to a sauce and eating apples hold their shape, and a pie made from only one is either soup under a lid or raw chunks in syrup. The apple and blackberry crumble in this collection can take Bramleys alone because nothing has to hold together under a slice.

Roll the larger disc out on a floured worktop to a round about 32cm across and 3mm thick.

Line a 23cm pie dish with it, easing the pastry into the corner rather than stretching it.

Pile the fruit in, mounding it slightly higher in the middle than at the edges.

Roll the second disc out to a round about 26cm across.

Brush the pastry rim of the base with beaten egg.

Lay the lid over the fruit and press the two edges together all the way round.

Trim the overhang with a knife and crimp the edge between finger and thumb, sealing it properly. A seam that opens lets the juices boil out onto the oven floor and leaves the fruit dry.

Cut a 2cm hole in the centre of the lid and two short slashes either side of it. Steam with nowhere to go lifts the lid clean off the fruit and forces the juice out at the crimp.

Chill the assembled pie for 20 minutes.

Heat the oven to 200C/400F with a heavy baking tray inside it, so the base of the pie meets hot metal from the first minute.

Brush the lid with the rest of the beaten egg.

Scatter the demerara sugar over the top.

Set the pie on the hot tray and bake at 200C/400F for 20 minutes, until the pastry has set and taken its first colour.

Turn the oven down to 180C/350F.

Bake for a further 35-40 minutes, until the lid is deep gold and thick juice is bubbling slowly through the central hole rather than running thin.

Push a skewer through the hole into the fruit. It should meet no resistance at all.

Cool the pie for at least an hour before cutting. The cornflour only finishes thickening as the filling cools, and a pie cut straight from the oven floods the plate and the slice falls apart.

Serve warm rather than hot, with cream or the vanilla custard in this collection.