My reference point for apple pastries were entenmann's, cosco, and shitty convenient stores, so I made these with reluctance. Fortunately, they turned out beautifully and absolutely scrumptious. I gave one to my friend and he was moaning as he ate it and demanded a second. It also kind of disturbed me in realizing just how gross and bad all the commercially made apple pastries are. They are not even comparable to this homemade version.
It must be noted that this cooksillustrated recipe is very user friendly. As you can see, I basically butchered the "quick puff pastry" dough, producing little to no distinct layers or flakiness, but it was still amazingly good. It was basically a pie crust, which is by no means a bad thing. I couldn't get a dark brown crust on it, but it was still crispy and delicious. I also could not, for the life of me, seal the edges so I fully expected pools of liquid to seep out, but it barely did and a nice hard syrup formed on the edges which was pleasantly tasty.
This was nowhere close to perfect, and it was still one of the best pastries I've ever made.
The level of difficulty for this is actually reasonably high. The reason I say this is because you have to roll out the dough to a 17" x 17" square. This is not easy for the novice. The only reason it was doable for me was because I have made literally a hundred batches of croissants in my life and as a result have become decent at rolling out square dough.
That being said, this is not croissant dough and is much more forgiving. But again, rolling out dough into a decent square takes some practice.
ingredients:
makes 9 turnovers
dough
1. 2 cups of ap flour (10 ounces)
2. 1 TBL granulated sugar
3. 1 tsp table salt
4. 16 TBL cold unsalted butter (cut into 1/2" cubes)
5. 6 TBL ice water
6. 1 tsp lemon juice
apple filling
7. 4 gold delicious apples (about 1 pound after peeled and cored)
8. 1 cup of granulated sugar
9. 2 tsp lemon juice
10. 1/4 tsp table salt
cinnamon sugar topping
11. 1/4 cup granulated sugar
12. 1 tsp ground cinnamon
recipe:
1. Combine 10 oz of flour, 1 TBL sugar, and 1 tsp salt into food processor. Pulse for 1 second.
2. Add 4 TBL of cubed butter into the flour and pulse 4-6 times until butter is in dime sized pieces.
3. Add rest of cubed butter and pulse 6-7 times until butter is all dime sized.
4. Combine ice water and lemon juice into a bowl. Add 3 TBL of the liquid to the flour and butter mixture. Toss to combine.
5. Add in the remaining liquid , toss, then turn dough onto work surface. Follow instructions below to Fraisage the dough. Wrap and refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
- 6. Unwrap the dough and follow instructions below to roll out dough twice. After you have folded and rolled the dough a second time, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
7. Lightly flour both sides of the dough and roll it out into an 17" x 17" square.
note: - Every few minutes, lightly flour the top, flip over, then lightly flour the top again before continuing to roll out. This will help to prevent sticking and any major breakage of the butter through the dough.
note: - When rolling out, focus mainly on rolling from the middle, diagonally towards the corners and also only rolling the corners themselves vertically and horizontally. This helps keep a square shape much better then rolling vertically and horizontally from the middle.
8. After you have rolled an approximate 17" x 17" square, use a knife or pizza cutter to cut and straighten out the edges of the dough to a 15" x 15" square.
note: - don't cut off too much from the edges or else square will quickly become smaller than 15" x 15". Trim just a tiny bit.
9. Using a ruler, cut the dough into 3, 5" strips. Cut each strip into 3, 5" squares for a total of nine 5" x 5" squares. Place onto parchment lined baking sheet and place into refrigerator.
10. While the dough squares are resting, peel and core 3 1/2 - 4 golden delicious apples (1 lb after peeled and cored). Grate them on a box grater into a bowl.
11. To the apples add 1 cup of sugar, 2 tsp lemon juice, and 1/4 tsp table salt. Mix well.
12. Working with one dough square at a time and leaving the rest in the refrigerator, place dough square onto work surface. Pick up 1 TBL of the apple mixture, squeeze 5-10 times so that most of the liquid is squeezed out, and place onto the middle of the dough square. Repeat again so that you add approximately 3-4 TBL of the apple mixture.
13. Dab your finger in the apple juice and moisten all 4 edges of the dough square. Fold dough over to create as neat of a triangle as possible and lightly push down on the edges to seal.
14. Using a fork, press down on the edge of the triangle to crimp and seal the edge. Make sure you are pressing down on both the top and bottom layer. Work your away around both sides of the triangle so the entire thing is crimped and sealed. Place sealed triangle package back onto the baking sheet in the refrigerator.
15. Repeat steps 12-14 with all 9 dough squares.
16. Refrigerate turnovers for 30 minutes, or cover with plastic wrap for up to 24 hours.
17. While the turnovers are chilling, adjust oven to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees.
18. Combine 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon and mix well.
19. After turnovers have finished chilling, take out, brush lightly with water, and sprinkle a generous amount of the sugar/cinnamon mixture on top.
20. Bake for 15-22 minutes until crust is golden brown. These actually taste better warm or even room temperature, so allow to cool well before eating.
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