Hello, everyone!

Every week I am looking for some interesting recipes that are simple in my point of view. Sometimes I can overthink and make everything for the scratch. Of course it makes a difference, but in reality we want to be able to make something fast and delicious. Since making dough, letting it rest and just then being able to use it, make the whole process of baking for yourself, your family and friends too complicated. I am a regular person, and some types of dough I actually prefer to buy in the store (for now).

Therefore, my choice of this week is a simple pastry that in Norway is called “wienerpecan”, but I call it apple pie in portions/bars. You don’t need to spend a time on the dough because we will use puff pastry dough from the store. It is a decent quality, takes 20 minutes to unfroze and ca. 20 minutes to bake it. So, it is a very fast way of baking delicious pastry that will cost less then in the store and taste super delicious.

The ingredients:

1. Apples – 0.5 kg
2. Puff pastry – 200 g
3. Sugar – 60 g
4. Cinnamon – 10 g
5. Mix of nuts – 35 g
6. Honey – 2 tsp

Step 1. Prepare apples with cinnamon

Before working with a dough, let’s prepare apples for inside. You could use the fresh, but they will give off a juice and it will make it more difficult to work with pastry. So first, we will clean apples from the skin and cores (seeds) and cut it into small cubes. Then divide your nuts into two groups: one for decor and other one (larger) for inside. The larger group of nuts we need now, so cut them into small pieces.

Now we are ready to fry apples. Warm up the butter on max heat and then add the sugar, but DON’T stir it. This is very important. We are making a sort of a caramel and we need to let sugar to melt on the pan. If we start stirring it, it is much easier to burn it before it melts. It will take for about 30 seconds, so keep your eye on the pan with sugar. When it will start changing the colour to the copper (like on the picture), add apples and stir it well. The add 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and cut nuts. Mix it well, decrease the heat to 5 out of 9 and let it fry for 7 minutes. Then put them in a plate and let to cool down for ca. 15 minutes, so dough will not melt.

Step 2. Use your creativity or use my ideas to make some one bite pastry

First of all, we need to warm up the oven to 160 degrees Celsius. And then, we can work with a dough.

I am doing it myself just second time, so it is not a perfect pastry shapes, but they are very tasty. And what I learned from previous time is that baked pastry usually looks much better than raw. Just practice a bit and be an artist. I propose you my three versions below. V1 – is larger pastry that looks like wienerpecan, but needs to be cut before eating it. V2 – is one bite pastry, which is very easy to eat but you will need more dough for this amount of apples. V3 – is more similar to apple strudel.

When you shaped your lovely pastry pieces, apply a bit of honey before distributing nuts as a decor. Honey will play a role of the glue for nuts. I use my fingers and try to distribute honey evenly.

Now ready pastry put into the warmed up oven to bake in the middle part (central shelf of your oven) for 15 minutes.

Step 3. Bake pastry

After we have waited for 15 minutes, Increase the oven temperature to 180 degrees Celsius and we will apply egg on top of the pastry to add more yellow colour to it.

Put an egg in the bowl, whisk it slightly just until egg white is mixed with egg yolk. Take a brush and distribute egg on top of the pastry. Then set it beck in the oven for another 15 minutes. That’s all.

Enjoy your food!