Apfelkuchen, Apple Pie or Apple Tart!

Oh it is really too early to be baking, although it IS already 8 a.m.! Having been woken by the alarm at 6:15 (which is usual), I was followed by that feeling that I just don't want to get up. So I lay in bed and hoped that my husband would awake. Okay, I do this most mornings and usually nothing stirs from the other side of the bed, but today I was lucky and up he got. He's like an energizer bunny in the morning! Ah few more moments to lie in bed.

All good things must come to an end and at 6:30 a.m. I rolled out of bed and started getting the kids lunches ready. Thank goodness for the rice and curry left overs from last night!

It was my turn to walk my eldest to the bus stop. Absolutely necessary since it is pitch dark when she leaves the house. But the problem with going out in the cold and the dark is that when I come back in again I'm ready to curl up in bed with a cup of hot chocolate. So now at 8 a.m. I'm still tiered.

I've promised a German style apple cake and fried noodles for my husbands office party this evening and since we also have to go to a musical performance of the kids it's got to be done early. Oh and I almost forgot the chocolate chip cookies that I promised for the after school care teachers, all 12 of them!

But this post is primarily about the Apfelkuchen.

This is probably  not a real Apfelkuchen because I merged 3 recipes. The only one that's on the internet is the pie crust. But they use American units and a food processor. 

Serves 8; Preparation time: 3 hours (including "sitting" and baking)

Ingredients

Pie Crust:
	170 g	Flour
	40 g	Sugar
	125 g	Butter, chilled
	1	Egg yolk
	<1 tbsp.	Whipping cream
Caramelized Apples:
	850 g	Peeled and cored apples
	40 g	Butter
	100 g	Brown sugar
	2 pk.	Vanilla sugar
	1/4 tsp.	Cinnamon, ground
Cake:
	125 g	Butter
	125 g	Sugar
	2	Eggs, seperated
	125 g	Flour
	1 1/2 tsp.	Baking powder
	1/4 tsp.	Salt
	75 g	Ground almonds
	60 ml	Milk

Method: 

The dough I made yesterday and put it in the fridge to rest. The technique used to make it is the same as the basic pastry. Unfortunately I forgot and put the sugar in with the flour and the butter and my fingers got exfoliated. Something that I've tried to avoid in the past.

The egg yolk and the cream get mixed together with a fork until they are well mixed. They don't have to be fluffy. And I used just under 1 tbsp. of cream and it was enough. If you have a larger egg yolk you should probably use a bit less.

I then mixed this in first with a fork,

which is probably a good idea if you have warmer hands. Then plop it was tightly wrapped in cling wrap and put in the fridge.

Today I'm starting with the apples. I peeled and cored them before realizing that I should weigh them so that's why the weight of the apples is after peeling and coring, which is a bit weird. Then I sliced them. My apples were largish so after cutting them in quarters I quartered each quarter.

I put my butter in a large skillet and melted it quickly. Then threw in the apples, sprinkled over the sugars, tossed and then allowed to cook on medium-high heat.

I think I have the wrong apples because they let a lot of water but in the end it all evaporated and things are looking good. The apples need constant turning especially after the water has dissolved and the sugar starts to caramelize. At this stage the apples will start glistening and maybe even brown (which mine didn't). The important thing to keep in mind is that the apples are now cooked and thus very fragile. So if you don't want to put apple puree on your cake be very, very gentle with the apples. Remove them from the heat and then set them aside.

If you want you can sprinkle some ground cinnamon on your apples. This will make them more Christmassy. I used 3 pinches on mine. My cinnamon is very strong because I have the real stuff, fresh from Sri Lanka.

Usually I would have gotten the pastry ready while the apples were cooking but today my judgement is a bit wonky due to me almost falling asleep. So when I started with the apples I thought, "what shall I do while they are caramelizing?" and came up with the answer "I can just write about it" So now I have apples and no pastry shell to put them in :( Ah but my post is getting along well.

I rolled out my pastry to fit in my 10", non-stick, springform pan and tried to pick it up and it all fell to pieces. I've never had this happen to this dough before. I contemplated just putting it in piece by piece but then I couldn't have taken a nice photo to share with you. So I opted to knead it all together again and re-roll it. I gave it a good knead because it seemed like it needed it! The second rolling came out perfect, so my guess is that a good kneading was exactly what it needed. Anyways when you do knead your pastry just remember you are NOT making bread and if you over knead it or are too hard on it your pastry will not be light and fluffy. So just push it around enough that it holds together.

I trimmed the edges with a plastic knife, which you can see in the picture. The only reason it is there is because my camera refused to focus on the pie dough so I had to put something inside to get it to focus!

Anyways, now the pie crust is in the oven at 190 C in a fan oven and is baking blind. That is, I pricked the dough, covered it in aluminium foil, poured in my baking beans and put it in the oven for 20 minutes. Voila!

Now I just have to make the filling which is pretty simple. I used a hand mixer to beat the butter and sugar together because I felt like there was not quite enough batter for my big mixer. Once they were fluffy I added in the egg yolk and mixed it until just combined, i.e. I couldn't see any egg yolk anymore! Then I added in the milk and beat that just a tiny bit. Next came the flour, salt, baking powder and ground almonds.

These dry items I mixed in with a spatula.

Then I beat the egg whites. I like to do this in a tall, thin "bowl" because they beat quicker. Turn the bowl upside down for a quick check to see if the egg whites are beaten enough ...

...and then add them to the mix. Now extremely gently fold in the egg whites. You want to keep as much air in there as possible.

Finally, I put the cake together. First the cake mix went in and then I arranged my apples on top (which I gave a quick stir before hand). Last time when I tried a similar cake the fruit all moved to the middle of the cake so I made sure that the apples went all the way to the edges. I'm hoping that I didn't over load the cake because that would mean I can't post this :( Now the cake went in the oven at 160 C (fan oven) for 40 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes and remove the sides of the springform. Then put it on a wire mesh to cool further. Once it's cooled (it doesn't need to be completely cold) carefully remove the base of your springform. If you use a non-stick spring form do not cut the cake on the non-stick surface. The coating will come off and that stuff is carcinogenic (since I first wrote this this fact has been proven wrong!). You don't want to be eating it.

I can't wait to try it this evening with some whipped cream.

Lemon Slices

I don't know why I bought a heap of lemons, but I did and so I had to find some way to use them up. I wanted to make a lemon meringue pie but it was just a bit too damp for it and there wasn't really anyone around to eat it. So I settled for some lemon slices from my Martha Stewart holiday cookie book. I've never tried them before and they turned out super delicious. The recipe says they last 2 days in the fridge but mine are still good a week on.

Ingredients:

Crust
	6 oz	Cold butter
	1 3/4 cups	Flour
	3/4 cups	Sugar (fine)
	3/4 tsp.	Salt
Filling
	4 lrg.	Eggs, lightly beaten
	1 1/3 cups	Sugar
	3 tbsp.	Flour
	1/4 tsp.	Salt
	3/4 cup	Fresh lemon juice
	1/4 cup	Milk
	Icing sugar, for dusting

Method:

I made the crust just like all my other crusts, by hand! First I cut up the butter into little pieces and then added it to the flour and the salt. 

I left the sugar until the end because I wasn't looking forward to rubbing sugar between my fingers. I guess in retrospect my fingers would have been well exfoliated!

Once I had my breadcrumbs I added the sugar and mixed it well. 

For this recipe it is important that you have the correct sized dish because the filling is liquidy before it is baked and you will have a big mess if you pour it into a shallow dish. I used a 9 by 13 inch cake tray which I lined with parchment paper. 

Then, with my hands, I pressed the mixture into my baking tray and then ... popped the crust into the FREEZER for 15 minutes. It might be prudent to check if you have space in the freezer before you start. If you're experiencing winter, then just throw it out on the balcony or the windowsill. 

Time for the oven to go on and the filling to be made. I set my oven to 160 C because I use a fan oven, with a regular oven I believe it is 180 C or 350 F. 

The filling is also relatively easy. The worst part is squeezing the lemon! I needed 3 1/2 large lemons to get 3/4 cup. I'm assuming that you could use lime juice too, (I always substituted lime juice for lemon when I'm cooking in Sri Lanka) although I think you'd need quite a few limes. Since limes tend to be more citric than lemons you might also want to consider using less than 3/4 cups. And I just had a brain wave, why not use any citrus fruit. I'm sure it would work with orange, grapefruit, etc.

Then I hand whisked the eggs, sugar, flour and salt together.

Stirred in the lemon juice and milk and voila! The filling was done. Really simple. In fact a great recipe for those little chef's in your house. Up until now there were no sharp utensils and no heat involved. I think I'm going to add this to my daughters recipe book.

The pastry was now ready and so was the oven so I popped it in and baked it for around 18 - 20 minutes. As you can see it was getting a bit brown in places when I took it out. Once you get this thing out of the oven you need to reduce the heat by about 10 C (25 F) so that the oven is ready to cook the lemon filling.

Onto this hot pastry, I poured my lemon filling and then carefully put it back in the oven for around 18 minutes. At around 18 minutes the filling was set and so I took the thing out and let it cool for a bit. Then, very carefully I tried to take the whole slab out of the pan. I was really freaking out at this point because I was sure it was going to break. But it didn't! I think that if I hadn't pressed in the dough so well at the beginning that it may well have cracked.

I left it on a wire rack to cool and then once it was cool cut it into rectangles. I don't remember how many I got out of it. You can cut them smaller if you are serving them together with a lot of other things and larger if they are being served by themselves. Use a really sharp knife to cut them because the bottom is crispy. Finally I dusted the squares with icing sugar. I did this by putting the icing sugar in a sieve and then shaking it over the squares. It didn't last long though. The squares are rather damp and absorb the sugar almost immediately so it wasn't pretty for long. If you are serving them for a special occasion (or photographing them!) I would recommend sprinkling them just before you serve them.

Find your Chef friendly version here!