Amish apple individual pies

Tags

apple pie, baking, dessert, Fall, holiday, sweet, yum

A friend of mine recently moved to Pennsylvania and she described these Amish individual apple pies.  Once I heard what it was I had to make one!  You wrap an apple in pie dough and bake it!  Well it’s a tiny bit more involved than that but not much. 

The other night the stars aligned and I had a craving, an apple and some pie dough in the fridge left over from a pumpkin pie I had made.

Pie dough (you can use your favorite recipe or possibly even the kind you buy in the store, although I can’t guarantee how good that will taste)

• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup shortening or butter
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 Tb sugar
• 3 Tb ice water

This makes enough dough for a decent sized pie so it would probably make about 6 apples I think.  Whisk the flour, salt & sugar together, cut in cold butter or shortening until the mix looks like crumbs. Drizzle in the ice water 1 Tb at a time and mix with a fork until the dough comes together.  Wrap the dough in plastic and let it sit in the refrigerator at least 1/2 hour.  Roll out the dough.

Core the apples, I don’t core all the way through. I used a red apple I had sitting around but use your favorite baking apple, some people prefer the tart green Granny Smith for baking. I use a red apple like a Gala because I don’t like to add alot of sugar and the red apples have their own sweetness.  Put a pat of butter, brown sugar, sprinkle of cinnamon, ginger & clove in the core of the apple.  I don’t measure this I just eye it but I suppose it would be about a tsp of butter, and a tsp of sugar.

Meanwhile in a saucepan combine 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of water, 2 Tbs butter and some spices.  I used cinnamon, ginger & clove because that is what I like in my apples,  you can use whatever spices you prefer.  Bring this mix to a boil and then remove from the heat.

Wrap the apples in the pie dough, place in either individual ramekins or a baking pan with sides and pour the syrup over the top of them.  Bake in a 350 oven for about 45 minutes.  If you have enough syrup left, baste again at the half way point.

I must admit I shared this with my husband but next time I will make two so I don’t have to share!

Semi disaster…eaten

Tags

apple, apple pie, baking, Fall, gingersnaps, sweet, yum

I had bought a package of gingersnaps. I don’t usually buy cookies, whether they are in a bag or not (because I’d rather make them). But the fact they they come in a bag makes them highly suspect.  I NEEDED them for a recipe. I really did. The recipe which turned out rather ok was for Pumpkin Cheesecake Stuffed Snickerdoodles by Willow Bird Baking which you can find here  I’m not gonna post them because she did such a great job the first time out, why bother? Also I only used the stuffing part of her recipe as I already had a snickerdoodle recipe.  But back to the gingersnaps and the reason I’m posting at all!

The bag says "The Good Cookie" - debatable.

Jason is EATING the gingersnaps that were left over from the snickerdoodle affair! NOOOOOOO.  I must make something out of them….. I had recently attended an office party and someone’s wife donated a big box of apples.  Donated is a kind word, I think she actually just wanted to get rid of them.  So I took 6 last week and made an apple coffee cake for my friend’s birthday. It was really good but I don’t think I took pictures and I didn’t post it.  It was moist and delicious and I even used concentrated apple juice with brown sugar to make a drizzle for the top! Yum.  But I digress, as usual, you try living in my head!  I was back at that office this week and no one really took any apples…so I took a few (or 5) more.  APPLE PIE with Gingersnap crust?!  Why not?  People make graham cracker crust don’t they?

The apple looked about like this.

Internet research here I come!  See, I usually will check around and see if others have made what I’m trying to make (which is usually yes or some version thereof) and I found a few gingersnap crust recipes.  So it has been done. Perfect!  But…I forgot the research part.  I usually read through quite a few versions and decide what way I want to try it. But this time I went with the first recipe I came across and just started right in. BIG MISTAKE.  I KNOW this, it’s happened before, why did I do it again?  I guess I thought it would be pretty basic and easy.   Hahaha.

So here is how you should NOT make gingersnap crust…

• 2 cups crushed gingersnaps
• 1 stick butter, melted (WAY too much)
• 1/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350.  It said to mix all the ingredients together and press into a pie pan and up the sides. I should have known when the sides didn’t really want to stay put. But I perservered, put it in the oven for the recommended 15 mins and when I looked in….Oh no….oh no….(just look at the picture)  pools of butter, fallen down sides. *@#! (Insert all the swear words known to man) I tried pressing the sides back where they should be with a spoon and stuck it back in the oven for probably another 15 minutes….same result.  So I persisted anyway, I don’t admit failure easily….I’m making a d#*! pie.

Puddles of Butter....so wrong.

The filling…the filling was very good if I say so myself.

• 4-5 sliced apples (peeled)
• juice of a big lemon
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 Tb flour
• 3/4 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

As you’re slicing the apples into a bowl squeeze lemon juice on them.  The lemon brings out their flavor, don’t worry, you won’t really taste it. (I used the cuisinart slicing blade attachment and got really small, thin slices of apple).  Mix together the sugar, flour & spices and sprinkle over the apples, mix it up.  Smell the Chinese 5 spice powder first to make sure you’ll like it.  I put in 1/2 tsp and then added more so the 3/4 tsp is just an approximation. I like how it smells, kinda clovey and almost licoricey from the star anise.  If you don’t want to be daring then use cinnamon & some ginger, clove, allspice (whatever you like really) DON’T leave out the pepper.  You will not notice it, but it does add something. Try it!  Anyway, I placed the apple slices in the messed up pie crust. (Hopefully you will have a better crust to put it in, do some research).

Then I made crumbles for the top so it was like a dutch apple pie. 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar & 1/2 cup butter. Mix them toether with your hands until it’s very crumbly and then put over the top of the apples.  Increase the oven temp to 375 and bake for about 45 mins depending on your oven.  You want the top to be golden and the apples to be tender.

The pie tasted wonderful.  It was a bit too buttery for my taste but the friends I had over to experiment on loved it and had seconds! Slicing the apples so thinly made the filling soft and almost custardy, instead of the usual apple chunky slices in most pies.  So…. keep the filling, work on the crust. I still want to do a gingersnap crust.   (Sorry only got a picture of the outside, it got eaten before I thought of taking an inside pic!)

I am not defeated, maybe a bit bruised.

Buttery but good.

Apfelpfannkuchen

Tags

Apples, Breakfast, Fall, german, pancakes, sweet, yum

I came across a recipe for the Apfepfannkuchen which is a German Apple pancake type thing.  But I didn’t really trust the site where I came across it because the last thing i made from her site was not very good and because she had baking powder in the batter and wanted it to sit for up to an hour.  Now if you know anything about baking and baking powder, you have to use it pretty quickly otherwise the leavening effect of the baking powder goes away.  So I researched some more. Ugg…. Every recipe was a little different.  I decided to just combine a few things and use my own knowledge. To explain.  My mom gave me a recipe for a Bismark.  which is an AMAZING souffle type pancake.  Made in an iron skillet in the oven.  That’s what this apple thing basically was.  So this is what I did and it turned out pretty well.

Put about 3-4 Tb of butter in a hot skillet on the stovetop, med heat.  Slice apples thinly and place them in the skillet.  Add about 1/3 c of brown sugar, sprinkle cinnamon, allspice, pepper & salt over and let it cook until apples are soft.  Preheat oven to 475. Meanwhile whisk together 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk and two eggs.  Pour the batter over the apple mixture and put in the oven.  Cook for 12 minutes.  The batter will puff up and it will get cripsy on the edges and sugary on the bottom!

The start.

Add the batter and pop in the oven

It iwll look like this!

Et viola! Eat it up!

Comfortably Yum

Tags

apple, baking, comfort, creamy, dessert, food, peach, pink floyd, sweet, tart, yum

Apple peach comfort

Last night all I had was one Granny Smith Apple (who was granny smith anyway) and some frozen peaches. Oh and a bit of pie crust dough leftover from the pumpkin pie last week. Something had to be made but there wasn’t enough fruit for a pie or a true tart. So…..

• Roll out the dough and put in the bottom and side of a 8 inch round stoneware dish (2 inches deep)
• Cut and peel the apple and put around the bottom, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
• Put the peach slices over the apples.
• Beat together 3 egg yolks, 3/4 cup sour cream, 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup flour.
• Pour over the top and bake at 350 for an hour.
• Take out of the oven and brush some peach jelly over the top.

It is so delicious. The tartness of the apple with the sweetness of the peach is just wonderful and the creaminess of the filling adds the touch of comfort.