Prepping Apples in Advance... How far in advance?

[Rover]

I'm planning on taking an apple tart to the office tomorrow and while I don't mind rising early to bake it, I don't really want to have to peel and slice apples at dawn. I prefer to bake pies and tarts fresh and avoid "soggy bottom" syndrome. I generally prep everything the night before, quickly pull it all together early morning and bake it - the tart is often still warm as I'm driving into the office. My concern is that prepping the apples the night before and immersing them in acidulated water, will leach the slices of flavour. What d'you think?

[Mjx]

Cook's Illustrated addresses this in their November & December 2012 issue (p. 2).

They peeled and sliced some apples one and two days ahead of baking them in an an apple crumble (holding them in the refrigerator in zip-lock bags), and compared the results to those using freshly prepped apples.

They found that after they were baked, the apples showed no discernible differences in their flavour, texture, or colour, regardless of how recently (or not) they were prepped.

This being the case, putting the apple slices in acidulated water seems like an unnecessary step (no idea whether flavour would be leached, but it does make sense).

[Bojana]

There is an interesting technique Rose Levy Beranbaum recommends in All American Apple Pie: let the apples macerate with sugar and boil down the resulting liquid with your butter. Here, leaving your apples prepped overnight may actually improve the end product.

[teapot]

Per the discussion of apple peelers, I can't resist posting this brilliant idea for using a power drill to zip through the apple peeling process. I have tried this and it works amazingly well. It's super fast and you're not stuck with some unipurpose item cluttering up you kitchen. Here's a link to a video demonstration:

http://www.wimp.com/peelingapples/