A few days after my last post, and completely unintentionally, I made an apple galette, or as Zack calls it, “Cheater’s Apple Pie.” The original recipe is from Bon Appetit magazine, but I changed and added a few things to it. Yeah, apples (and Apple) are good. Just because my law school wants us to “get used to” PCs doesn’t mean they can’t support them – it’s discriminatory to my choice of computer hardware. Would that be okay if they decided to just pick Dells? No. Jerks.
Anyway, I pretty much hate baking, mostly because most of the time I hate measuring things exactly right – lots of my cooking, despite the fact that the below recipes are all exact measurements, is approximate. (I realize my tort(e) post involved baking but that’s cheating too, as I used prepared puff pastry.) Baking (from scratch) needs to be pretty exact, otherwise things won’t rise, or bake evenly, or taste right. My mom is a really amazing baker, and besides being a talented baker she’s extremely exact about everything. I’m just too lazy to be bothered.
However, this recipe was great because the filling is sort of an approximation, and not perfectly exact. Okay, so the crust and the caramel needs to be relatively dead on but I’m happy to compromise. And, there's no rising or resting or any of that crap here. You don’t need the fancy baking tins or molds, or even a pie pan – just a baking sheet. Works for the lazy pie-eater in me.
Cheater’s Apple Pie
For the crust:
- 1 ½ cup flour
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. grated lemon zest
- ½ cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter
- 3 tbs. ice water
1. Place the flour, salt, and lemon zest in a food processor and pulse until mixed.
2. Add the butter, 1 tbs. at a time, and pulse with flour until a coarse meal forms. Careful not to over-mix as you could melt the butter.
3. Add the water a little at a time until moist clumps form. (If the dough is too dry, add more water as needed.)
4. Take dough out of food processor, form into a disk-esque shape, wrap with plastic and chill for at least an hour, and up to one day.
For the filling:
- 3 tbs. unsalted butter, divided
- 4 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced into wedges
- 1 tbs. honey
- 4 tbs. sugar, divided
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1/3 cup dried cherries or dried cranberries
1. Melt butter over medium-high eat in a pan. Add apples, honey and sprinkle 2 tbs. of sugar over, and lower heat to medium. Sauté until apples are tender and slightly browned – about 20 minutes.
2. Remove mixture from heat. Add cinnamon and dried fruit and let cool.
Assembly:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Cut parchment paper to fit a baking sheet. Unwrap dough and roll out into an approximately (yea!) 12 inch round, using flour so it doesn’t stick everywhere. Mound the filling in the middle, and you can either create a “pie” shape by making a free-form crust around the sides and arranging the apples into pretty shapes, or be even lazier and wrap the dough around the filling making a little purse. If doing the purse method, crimp the middles and seal completely.
3. Brush the remaining butter on the crust and sprinkle with the remaining sugar. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until the thing turns golden brown. Slice and serve warm with vanilla ice cream and with a ladle of the caramel sauce (recipe below).
For the caramel:
- 1 ½ cup sugar
- ½ water
- 3 tbs. unsalted butter
- ½ cup heavy whipping cream
1. While the pie is baking, boil the sugar and water together at a high heat for about 20 minutes, brushing the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush to remove any sugar crystals, until the sugar turns a light golden brown.
2. Turn off heat and add the butter, whisking quickly. Add in the heavy whipping cream, and whisky until incorporated – place back on a low heat, stirring until sauce is thick and creamy. Serve warm with the pie.
(This will keep, refrigerated, for a day or two. Just re-warm when serving.)
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