All posts tagged apple

I don’t have anything against pie. Really. It’s just that, well, there are so many things that can go wrong when you make a pie—especially the crust, and, honestly, it takes a lot of time and skill. What if the dough is too flaky, not flaky enough, lacking flavor? Who wants to have wasted all that work? You know what I mean?

And there’s also another reason I don’t make pie, a bigger issue, and it’s not pie’s fault in the slightest. This problem is with me. I have a terrible, unconquerable habit of picking things to make at the worst possible moments. From a lengthy long-rise yeast bread to a process-filled batch of cookies, I like to choose the most time-consuming recipes at the latest times of night. Case in point: these hand pies.

I saw a recent post over at Smitten Kitchen for Bourbon Peach Hand Pies and thought they were so adorable, a finger-food version of the classic, and I wanted to make them. At 8:30 PM, last Friday night. Now, see, with a lot of desserts, starting at 8:30 PM would be fine. But with hand pies, you really need to give yourself a good chunk of time because there’s a lot of chilling and taking out, chilling and taking out. All told, I finally went to bed at 2:15 AM.

But in this case, it was worth it.

I wanted apple pie filling, but I didn’t have a recipe for apple pie filling, not for 14 to 24 hand pies. So, basing things on a cookbook ingredient list, I started guessing about what to get (which, for your information, is how I ended up buying two three-pound bags of Gala apples. No, I hadn’t even been to the orchard at this point. Yes, good thing we like apples.)

This is a long recipe, but it’s not hard. Essentially, you’re going to create a dough (which involves a few steps), then roll it out and cut circles with a pastry cutter or a cookie cutter or, what I did, the opening to a storage container; these circles will be chilled, then filled* and folded, then chilled again. After that, you just bake and enjoy.**

(*For the filling, you’ll just core, peel and chop 3 or 4 good-sized apples, then mix them with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.)

(**Truthfully, there’s one more small step, so small I actually forgot about it until the pies were already baking: cutting slits into the pies, then brushing the dough with egg and topping with sugar. It’s OK if you make a few mistakes with this recipe, and that’s why I like it.)

Like most made-from-scratch pies, these are best fresh out of the oven, although they’re equally tasty reheated and topped with vanilla ice cream. In fact, now that I think about it, they’re not so bad cold, either. You decide which way is best for you.

Apple Hand Pies
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Filling adapted from Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook

Ingredients for Crust:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
16 tablespoons (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup sour cream
5 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup water

Ingredients for Topping:
One egg yolk beaten with 2 tablespoons water
Sugar for sprinkling

Ingredients for Filling:
3 or 4 medium-sized apples
3/8 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

To make the crust: in a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Place the sliced butter in another bowl. Place both bowls in the freezer for 1 hour. Remove the bowls from the freezer and make a well in the center of the flour. Add the butter to the well and, using a pastry blender (forks will work fine as a substitute), cut it in until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Make another well in the center. In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream, lemon juice and water and add half of this mixture to the well. With your fingertips, mix in the liquid until large lumps form. Remove the large lumps and repeat with the remaining liquid and flour-butter mixture. Pat the lumps into a ball; do not overwork the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. (Note: If preparing ahead of time, the dough can be stored at this point for up to one month in the freezer.)

Divide the refrigerated dough in half. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out one half of the dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Using your desired pastry cutter, cut circles out of the dough and transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place in the refrigerator to chill for about 30 minutes. Repeat the rolling, cutting, and chilling process with the remaining half of dough. (I ended up with a total of 18 1/2 circles, but it will vary based on the size of your cutter.)

While circles are chilling, make the filling. Core, peel and chop four or five apples into tiny pieces, much smaller than the chunks for a normal-sized pie. Put these pieces into a large bowl, and add the sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. Toss together.

Back to the dough: Remove the chilled dough from the refrigerator, and let stand at room temperature until just pliable, 2 to 3 minutes. Spoon about 1 tablespoons filling (or more, if your circles are larger) onto one half of each circle of dough. Quickly brush a little cold water around the circumference of the dough, and fold it in half so the other side comes down over the filling, creating a semicircle. Seal the hand pie, and make a decorative edge by pressing the edges of the dough together with the back of a fork. Repeat process with remaining dough. Place the hand pies back on the parchment-lined baking sheet, and return to the refrigerator to chill for another 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove the chilled hand pies from the refrigerator, cut a small slit in each and lightly brush with the egg yolk wash (try really hard to remember to do this now, not after you’ve already put them in the oven). Sprinkle sugar generously over the pies, and place pies in the oven to bake. Bake until the hand pies are golden brown and just slightly cracked, about 20 minutes. Remove the pies from the oven, and let stand to cool slightly before serving.

Sunday afternoon, some friends and I drove out to the country, where on either side of the highway, green acres stretch as far as you can see. There was a lot of talk about farms, about milking cows, about which of us would be first to admit the whole country-living thing sounds appealing. (Personally, I think I’d like very much to eat from my own land, to work with the earth, to wear blue jeans and t-shirts every day. At least I think this now, having never done it.) And after miles of corn fields, sprawling estates and one high school, we came to our destination: Kuipers Family Farm, which convinced me that I really would like it, this whole rural thing, even more.

There’s just something about an apple orchard. The kind of something that makes you feel young again, like you’re a kid, like there’s nothing in all the world as important as filling your bag with fresh fruit and biting into the juicy flesh of a golden Honeycrisp. This time of year, most of the trees have been picked at prime, leaving large wooden crates filled with apples at the end of rows of bare trees, so we picked from those instead of branches.

And there was a little boy, maybe seven or eight years old, searching the bins, intent on finding the best fruit. He was loud, enough to get the attention of a group of us, pointing at one big, red apple a few inches lower than his arm. “Could someone hand me that apple right there?” he asked, to no one in particular, but confident he would get it. Later, I heard him shout, “It’s a really big one!” as he grabbed an apple larger than his fist. I asked him what his secret was, and this is what he told me, after pausing and with complete authority: look for the ones without the bruisings.

We took a hayride into the orchard and a short walk out, on the way in with empty bags and steaming cider, on the way out with clusters of juicy apples, each of us biting into one as we walked. They were delicious, crisp skin revealing tender, slightly bitter flesh.

When I got home, I sliced two large Honeycrisp apples into thin, thin slices, preparing them for a recipe I’d been eager to try: puffed apple pancake, taken from Bon Appetit September 2002 and recently posted at Cocoa & Cheese.

I felt like I was the star of a cooking show, whipping the ingredients together quickly—the recipe is so simple! with basic ingredients! easy instructions!—that I honestly impressed myself, I’ll just admit it. While the pancake cooked, I even made an omelet, which, since I’m feeling transparent, I’ll just say wasn’t quite as impressive, and we’ll leave it at that.

No, but really, if you are enjoying apple season like I am, if you like impressive breakfasty recipes that could not be simpler, if you have been looking for something a little different to try: this is the thing. It will disappear as quickly as you can make it.

Puffed Apple Pancake
Adapted from Bon Appetit, September 2002

Ingredients:
1 cup skim milk
4 large eggs
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup all purpose flour
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2-3 Honeycrisp apples, peeled, cored, thinly sliced

3 tablespoons brown sugar
Powdered sugar for dusting

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425°F. Whisk milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt and cinnamon in large bowl until well blended. Add flour and whisk until batter is smooth. Place butter in a glass pie dish. Place dish in oven until butter melts, about 5 minutes. Remove dish from oven. Place apple slices in overlapping rows atop melted butter in baking dish (they don’t need to be orderly, particularly if you’d like a rustic look). Return to oven and bake until apples begin to soften slightly and butter is bubbling and beginning to brown around edges of dish, about 10 minutes.

Pour batter over apples in dish and sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake pancake until puffed and brown, about 20 minutes. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired. Serve warm.

Makes 4 servings