When I bake, either we give away most of it or Mr. Hubby takes it to work to share with his colleagues. In the last couple months, since we’ve been in confinement, we’ve been eating way too many desserts! So I was looking for ways to still make dessert but not be stuck with enough leftovers to feed an army. That’s when I came up with these tasty puff pastry baked apples.
I had some extra mini apples on hand after hosting an online class and was trying to figure out what to do with them. Mr Hubby loves dutch apple pie, but I didn’t want to have to eat our way through an entire pie by ourselves. That’s when I got an idea. What if I baked a whole apple but wrapped it in puff pastry, creating individual desserts?
Apple pie for one
These turned out so damn good, I don’t know why I didn’t think of the combination before! They quite literally tasted like apple pie. Even Nibbles approved! 😉
I peeled and cored the apples, but left them whole. After tossing them in cinnamon sugar (because why not?) I wrapped them in strips of puff pastry, then popped them in the freezer to set up. While they were chilling, I whipped up a half batch of salted butter caramel. When the caramel cooled, I decided to pipe some into the center of the apple where the core was. Then finished them off by brushing the puff pastry with an egg wash and sprinkling each apple with a nice layer of cane sugar.
The apples took about 50 minutes to bake, but they were quite small, so if you’re using a larger apple, the baking time would need to be adjusted. Personally I served them with extra caramel and a sprinkle of powdered sugar, but vanilla ice cream would have paired wonderfully!
To be honest, these would be a fabulous dessert to serve for a dinner party if you want to spruce up dessert and do something extra special.
Puff Pastry Baked Apples
Equipment
- Small sauce pan
- Baking Pan
- Peeler
- Apple Corer
- pastry brush
- Rolling Pin
Ingredients
Quick Puff Pastry
- 100 g butter
- 125 g flour
- 2.5 g salt
- 60 ml water
Salted Butter Caramel
- 20 ml water
- 52 g sugar
- 60 ml heavy cream
- 60 g salted butter
Finishings
- 8 small apples, peeled & cored
- 50 g raw sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- splash of cream
- pinch of salt
- pinch of sugar
- 60 g granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
Instructions
Quick Puff Pastry
- Add the flour and salt into a medium sized bowl and stir around with your fingers to mix.
- Add your cold cubed butter to the bowl and toss to cover in flour.
- Gently squish each cube with your fingers to flatten slightly. Don't over work too much, we want to keep the butter in fairly big chunks.
- Slowly start adding your cold water, about a TBSP at a time. Gently toss the dough with your fingers. Don't over mix. You don't want to 'activate' the gluten, this will result in an elastic dough that will shrink more during baking.
- Once all of the dough starts to stick together and there aren't any large dry patches, pull it out onto your floured work top and shape into a square. You should still see large chunks of butter, that's fine.
- Roll out the dough into a long rectangle. Brush off the excess flour and do your first letter-fold.
- Rotate your dough, so the open ends are at the top and bottom (closest to you). Roll out once more and repeat the letter fold.
- Rotate once more, so the ends are at the top and bottom. Now you're going to do your first book fold.
- Rotate once more, so the ends are at the top and bottom. Do your last book fold.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge, while you prep the rest of your ingredients.
Salted Butter Caramel
- Add the sugar and water to a sauce pan and heat over medium-high heat.
- In a separate sauce pan, heat up the cream. It needs to get to 160°-170°C (320°-340°F)
- Once the sugar mixture starts to brown, swirl the pan off of the heat. Whatever you do, do not mix with a spoon. The longer you cook the caramel, the more bitter it becomes.
- Off the heat, slowly add the cream, stirring continuously with a whisk. Be careful, this is when it bubbles up and starts to bubble and spit like a cauldron. That is normal. Keep pouring in the cream and whisking simultaneously. Once everything is combined, add the butter, then mix until the butter is melted and thoroughly mixed in.
- Transfer to a bowl and store in the fridge until needed.
Assembly
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (375°F)
- Mix the granulated sugar and cinnamon together. Set aside.
- Roll out the puff pastry into a long rectangle. You'll need long strips. It should be about 3mm (1/6 inch) thick.
- Cut long strips, about 2.5cm wide (1 inch), then cut four squares, large enough to cover the bottom of the apple.
- Toss the apples in the cinnamon sugar, then place them on the squares of puff pastry.
- Pull the edges of the square up against the apple. Then with the strip of puff pastry, start wrapping the apple from the bottom up, holding the corners of the bottom piece in place. Let a small hole where the core of the apple was.
- Place in the fridge to set up for about 15 minutes.
- Mix the egg yolk with a splash of cream and a pinch of salt & sugar to make your egg wash.
- Remove the apples from the fridge and transfer to your baking pan. Pipe the salted caramel into the center of the apple.
- Brush the puff pastry with the egg wash and sprinkle each apple generously with cane sugar.
- Bake for 45 minutes or until the puff pastry is golden brown and a knife can be slid into the apples (through the hole in the top).
- Let cool for 15 minutes then serve with vanilla ice cream or extra caramel! Enjoy!
Nutrition
