I'm a big fan of pastries. Also cakes - which many feel is part of the job description if you're an archivist. However, while I've been known to make a cake or two at home I'm never going to have the patience to do proper pâtisserie, despite all the times my gran showed me the proper way to do choux pastry and how to get layers in puff pastry.
Thankfully the miracle of modern convenience food means I don't have to and as my lifelong favourite baker, Fisher & Donaldson's*, is only delivering to the Fife area right now and I can't see a trip north in my immediate future I decided to use up some aging apples and bring some fancy (but perfect for the lazy) apple pastry into my Confined Kitchen.
This is based on a recipe my mother uses but could be classed as more of an assemblage than actual baking thanks to the invention of ready made ready rolled puff pastry. Yay! Served warm with cream it will pass muster as a effortful looking pudding that takes no actual effort. I prefer to wait until it's cool and eat it by the slice as a fancy but lazy apple danish.
4) Chuck the apples in a bowl with a generous squeeze of lemon juice to keep them from going brown.
5) Unroll your pastry on the baking sheet. You could use one of those frozen blocks, let it thaw and then faff with rolling it out, but by that stage you may as well give up and make puff pastry from scratch. We're after results with no effort, remember?
6) Arrange your sliced apples in whatever pattern you like, overlapping them slightly. I tend to go for rows as it makes slicing it up easier. Leave about a cm of edge around the apple layout.
7) Remember you have frozen blueberries and grab a handful to scatter on top.
8) Use a touch of milk, or egg, or even water, to brush a glaze round the edge of the pastry sheet. No need to score any sort of edge line, though you can if you want.
9) Whack in the oven for however long the packet said the pastry takes to cook. I gave it 15 minutes.
10) Dump a wodge of your jam in a pan and put it over a low heat to get melty. You can loosen it with a drop of water if you think it needs it - you want it warm and runny.
11) When the pastry is ready the edge will be raised and brown and the apples will hold their shape but be cooked enough to cut with a spoon. Take it out of the oven and get ready for fancy glaze manoeuvres.
12) Take your jam glaze and pour it on the warm apples. Use a pastry brush to spread it out and cover everything with a nice glaze.
That's it. You can slice it up and eat it warm as a dessert with a bit of pouring cream, or crème fraîche, but I prefer to let the glaze cool a bit till it goes jammy again then slice it up and eat it as a very lazy apple danish thing. It also works cold the next day for breakfast.
* Their Coffee Towers are perfection and my personal favourite, though I have an aunt who's been known to arrange flights from Canada to France with a layover in Edinburgh so she can drive to St. Andrews just to pick up some of their world famous fudge doughnuts.
Thankfully the miracle of modern convenience food means I don't have to and as my lifelong favourite baker, Fisher & Donaldson's*, is only delivering to the Fife area right now and I can't see a trip north in my immediate future I decided to use up some aging apples and bring some fancy (but perfect for the lazy) apple pastry into my Confined Kitchen.
This is based on a recipe my mother uses but could be classed as more of an assemblage than actual baking thanks to the invention of ready made ready rolled puff pastry. Yay! Served warm with cream it will pass muster as a effortful looking pudding that takes no actual effort. I prefer to wait until it's cool and eat it by the slice as a fancy but lazy apple danish.
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| Ingredients mug shot |
Ingredients
- Ready rolled puff pastry from the chiller cabinet
- Apples - I used about 5 small Braeburns. Eating apples work best for this
- Bit of lemon juice to stop the cut apples going brown (Sadly, I am still fresh lemonless)
- Jam of some description for a glaze (I've used pretty much anything: ginger jam, my dad's apple & blackberry jelly, even plum butter (which was quite dark looking). On this occasion I have my favourite for this - St. Dalfour 100% fruit Thick Apricot. The lack of added sugar means you can pretend it's a healthy option)
- Frozen blueberries (not shown because I forgot I had any till 5 minutes before it went in the oven)
Method
1) Turn on the oven to whatever temperature the pastry packet says. I have a fan-ish oven (supposed to be fan oven, but I doubt it) so I went for 200°C
2) Take the pastry roll out of its packet to warm up a bit and prepare a baking tray. I like those washable teflon sheets that are ridiculously expensive at Lakeland but you can also find in the pound shop for a quid, but baking parchment (or oiling if you want to make washing up harder) also works.
3) This is the tough bit. You do have to chop the apples. No need to peel, though. Core them, chop in half and then thinly slice them.
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| Chopped apples |
4) Chuck the apples in a bowl with a generous squeeze of lemon juice to keep them from going brown.
5) Unroll your pastry on the baking sheet. You could use one of those frozen blocks, let it thaw and then faff with rolling it out, but by that stage you may as well give up and make puff pastry from scratch. We're after results with no effort, remember?
6) Arrange your sliced apples in whatever pattern you like, overlapping them slightly. I tend to go for rows as it makes slicing it up easier. Leave about a cm of edge around the apple layout.
7) Remember you have frozen blueberries and grab a handful to scatter on top.
8) Use a touch of milk, or egg, or even water, to brush a glaze round the edge of the pastry sheet. No need to score any sort of edge line, though you can if you want.
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| Pre-oven shot |
10) Dump a wodge of your jam in a pan and put it over a low heat to get melty. You can loosen it with a drop of water if you think it needs it - you want it warm and runny.
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| Jam in pan. I used about an inch from a skinny jar. |
12) Take your jam glaze and pour it on the warm apples. Use a pastry brush to spread it out and cover everything with a nice glaze.
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| Looks much fancier than the effort needed to make it deserves |
That's it. You can slice it up and eat it warm as a dessert with a bit of pouring cream, or crème fraîche, but I prefer to let the glaze cool a bit till it goes jammy again then slice it up and eat it as a very lazy apple danish thing. It also works cold the next day for breakfast.
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| Fancy pastry for little effort |
* Their Coffee Towers are perfection and my personal favourite, though I have an aunt who's been known to arrange flights from Canada to France with a layover in Edinburgh so she can drive to St. Andrews just to pick up some of their world famous fudge doughnuts.
Again, my idea of laziness clashes with other bloggers'; it's going to be long into lockdown before I bake anything, even with ready-rolled I suspect. But this looks excellent, especially as breakfast. If not to be compared with the incomparable F&D pastries, sigh.
ReplyDeleteQ: if you'd remembered the blueberries earlier, would you have put them *under* the apple? Or is that a mis-extrapolation of how my mum used to do apple and blackberry?
Re blueberries, probably not. It makes layering the apples harder. I usually just scatter them on top in the spaces between the apples. Have also done this with plums but destoning them is a faff.
ReplyDeleteThat is totally my 'go-to' when I need a quick and reasonably pretty sweet thing, or way to use up slightly browning apples or a spare bit of puff pastry. Hmm - pity I haven't any of either in right now.
ReplyDeleteMmmm, pastries. Think I may have some pastry in the jenga freezer!
ReplyDeleteOh, look, it's time to buy pastry...
ReplyDelete