Today's Experiment ~ Flaky Apple Pockets

You know me, I love experimenting in the kitchen.  Used to be that I limited my creations to primary meal foods, meaning proteins/starches/fruits/vegetables.  Baking always frightened me, mostly because I would often find myself with a learning experience rather than a delectable delight.  I'm happy to say that now, after biting the bullet and baking while living this Log Cabin life, I am finding myself more adventuresome with deserts (comes with experience and knowledge).  This brings me to today's experiment.  


We recently picked more wild apples (click on this Skillet Apple Pie link to know what I mean about wild), we have apples, apples and more apples.  We like drying them for a healthy snack, especially when hiking, and we like baking with them; we don't have a taste for apple sauce, and I haven't ventured further into other ways to preserve them.  If you have any favorite apple preserving recipes, please feel free to share!  So today I decided to experiment with creating something with the apples and other ingredients I had on hand.

Lise's Flaky Apply Pockets
Ingredients:
6 cups apples, peeled and diced small
3/4 cup melted butter for the filo
1/4 cup melted butter for the apples
1 heaping cup brown sugar, loosely poured
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 tbsp tapioca, ground (I use a coffee grinder)
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch of clove
pinch of nutmeg
lemon to keep the apples from turning
raw sugar cane for sprinkling
1 pkg filo dough
sprinkle of flour when working with the filo

After you have peeled and chopped your apples (my least favorite part, especially when working with wild apples, which have lots of spots to cut out), slowly add the tapioca, making sure to mix it in with all the apples.  (Why tapioca?  It works like a thickener, long ago I made a blueberry pie that called for the tapioca, and it worked perfectly.  I thought it was a good addition to today's experiment!)

Add the walnuts and mix to spread evenly.

Add the brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, again mixing thoroughly to coat all the apples evenly.

Slowly add the 1/4 cup melted butter into the apple mixture, once again making sure everything is coated evenly (there will be very little liquid, but everything should be moistened).  In my opinion, it is important to slowly incorporate the ingredients into the apples, allowing the flavor of each addition to be incorporated to the whole on it's own...I have no idea if this is substantiated with scientific fact, but since this is my experiment, I say it's the right thing to do!

Now it's time to work with the filo dough.  Remember this dough dries out quickly; you want to keep it wrapped in the plastic layer that the dough was surrounded with, and you may want to have a damp paper towel to wrap it in.  Lay out 4 layers of the dough and brush with butter.  (This is where my experiment becomes your advantage...I started with only 2 layers, but that was not enough, go with 4 or even more.)

Place about  a 1/2 cup of the apple mixture into the center of the filo dough.

Fold the bottom half over the apple mixture, and brush with butter.

Fold the top half over the buttered filo, brush the sides with butter, then fold each corner like you were making a package.

Butter is you friend (maybe not your waistline, but your filo dough), keep the edges moist and keep folding like a package.  (This is another point where you are the beneficiary of my experiment...I initially folded the pastry under the package, but later realized that by folding it on top, the pastry would become more flaky when baking.)

I ended up with 7 apple pockets.  But I also had 2 extra sheets of filo...(you got it, more learning from the experiment)...so I re-wrapped the first two pockets I made (they only had 2 layers) with an additional layer of filo, first brushing with more butter, and then wrapping like a package; they are the two on the left. 

Now brush the tops of all the pockets with melted butter.

Generously sprinkle raw sugar on top of the pockets.

Bake at 350 (yes, yes, more experiential learning on my end, but I'm giving you my end result determination) for 10-12 minutes, until the tops become golden brown and the liquid that has escaped the pockets is bubbling.

I'm proud to say the experiment was a success!  Mountain Man gobbled his up and can't wait until tomorrow morning to have it for breakfast with his coffee:)  Let me know if you decide to try it...

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise