Another one from the great pastry book from Nikosia. I’m very pleased with it, though my Mum’s apple pie it isn’t. Different pastry, Mum always makes it kind of shortcrust, but my apples this evening were prepared with a lot of cinnamon and and … a zest of one orange. When the pie is warm, the orange peel comes through beautifully.

For the pastry I used 180g of plain flour, a pinch of salt, 90 g of butter and a bit of cold water to keep it together. Once combined I cooled it in the fridge and got cracking with the apples. I tossed the peeled and thinly sliced apples in  a mixture of flour, sugar, cinnamon  and orange zest. Most of the pastry went for the bottom, then in went the apples, then the rest of the pastry on the top, egg yolk and- which I remembered 40 minutes into the baking- caster sugar on top. I baked it in 200 Celsius for the first 30 minutes and for the remaining 15, in 150.

Served it with Waitrose’s finest vanilla custard.

Still working on it and dragging on about how good it is.  10 out of 10 today, really!

The pastry cases are lovely and crumbly, I used 75g plain flour, 50g butter and blitzed it. Then added 25g of sugar and pressed together for soft dough. With this amount of butter I didn’t bother buttering the tins, love the way they turned out after 30 minutes in the oven, the temperature was around 160 Celsius.

The toffee filling took 100g of condensed milk, 50 g of butter and the same amount of brown sugar, with a large spoon of golden syrup and simmered it for about 20 minutes.

Filled the pastry cases with it, while still warm and left to cool. Topped it up with sliced banana, squeezed some lemon juice on top, and finally whipped cream and a sprinkle of dark chocolate.

Very sweet and very rich.

As I thought yesterday, I ran to get some nuts and butter today and got cracking.  As usual with the things I’m making for the first time ever, I compared a few recipes online and chose what I liked most of all of them.

And so I went for the nuts I like most- pistachios, pecans , almonds and hazelnuts. Having blitzed them not too finely I added lots of cinnamon and a bit of sugar.

When assembling the baklava I prepared the tray with baking paper, buttered it, then 5 layers of filo, each buttered, then a layer of nut mixture, 5 layers of filo, buttered thoroughly again, nuts and 5 layers of filo, all the same procedure, except that the last layers I slit slightly, it was supposed to make the slicing easier I think, but also the visual effect, when first peeked into the oven  after 15 minutes made it worth while- it looked great, as the pastry puffed up slightly and started to become golden.

I baked it in about 150 degrees Celsius for 40 minutes and while that was happening, I made the syrup- simmered some water with sugar, about 10 cloves,lemon rind,  at the end added a juice of half a lemon and a small spoon of vanilla paste. The syrup took about 20 minutes.

Having taken the lovely golden beauty out of the oven I pricked it in between the diamonds with a sharp knife and then spooned the syrup all over. I intended to let it all soak in before tasting, but I couldn’t. It’s lovely, nutty, sweet, but not heavy and not sickly like some shop bought baklava.

A good pat on the back. 😉