Cooking for Pleasure: Apples in Puff Pastry

Patty Schied
7 hours ago
2 min read

By Patty Schied

Although this dessert is made with puff pastry, don't let it scare you. Frozen puff pastry is available at your local grocery stores and is very easy to use. The supermarkets sell Pepperidge Farm pastry, made with shortening. Rainbow Foods sells an all-butter one called Dufour. If you are feeling ambitious, you can always make your own, of course, but I didn't have the patience to do all the chilling and folding required.

This recipe is impossibly easy. You saute the apples in butter until soft, add sugar and cinnamon, then let them cool to room temperature. They can even be cooked the day before and refrigerated until ready to use.

Ingredients:

3 firm crisp apples, peeled and sliced (or cut into small chunks)

2 tablespoons of unsalted butter

¼ cup sugar (either white or brown)

½ teaspoon of cinnamon

One package of puff pastry, thawed

1 egg, beaten

½ cup sliced almonds

Frying the apples. (Photo by Patty Schied)

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees

Heat butter in a medium-sized frying pan until melted. Add apples and cook over medium heat until they are cooked through and begin to take on some color. They are fried before baking because the baking time isn't long enough to cook raw apples. Add sugar and cinnamon. Stir until mixed.

The sugar will melt into the apple butter mixture. Taste for seasoning, adding more spice as needed. Set aside to rest until the apples are at room temperature, for at least an hour. THIS IS IMPORTANT. IF THE APPLES ARE HOT, THEY WILL MELT THE PASTRY DOUGH.

Thaw puff pastry according to package directions. Lightly roll out on parchment paper, so that there are no gaps in the dough. Cut one-third of the pastry on each side into strips at an angle that can be folded over the filled dough. Carefully spoon the apple mixture down the strip in the middle. Fold the cut strips over the filling, alternating sides.

Filling the pastry. (Photo by Patty Schied)

Brush filled pastry with beaten egg (this makes it a beautiful golden brown). Sprinkle on sliced almonds. Although you don't have to use sliced almonds, they can cover up any mistakes you have made when folding over the strips. (The beaten egg helps keep the almonds on the pastry). Using the parchment paper, slide pastry onto a large baking sheet.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a deep golden brown.

Slide baked pastry onto a cooling rack.

Mix:

2 cups of powdered sugar

Water or milk to make an icing for glazing.

Drizzle icing onto baked pastry. Cool to room temperature and serve.

• Patty Schied is a longtime Juneau resident who studied at the Cordon Bleu in London and has written a cookbook. Cooking For Pleasure appears every other week in the Juneau Independent's features. She welcomes questions about her column at patschied@yahoo.com.