Apfelstrudel

March is my month of Austrian cuisine. So far I've tried two traditional Austrian dishes - Spätzle and Apfelstrudel. The Spätzle was fairly easy and came out well, but the apple strudel will take some practice. I made it today with a lot of help from my husband, who peeled and sliced the apples, after we binge-watched half a dozen of videos on strudel recipes. In the end we chose this recipe by My German Recipes.

I think, as a first try with this tricky dough, my apple strudel came out fairly decent, but not perfect. The dough was too much for one strudel and next time I will try to make the strudel with half of the dough. The legends that you have to be able to read your newspaper through the stretched dough have their reason - the thinner it is, the crispier and tastier the strudel is. 

Another note - I followed the recipe and my apples were slightly sour and tart, I also added the juice of half a lemon, as the recipe calls, and as a result the filling is not sweet enough. Next time I will omit the lemon juice, it would be better if the filling is sweeter. Of course, may be the problem is that we didn't have any vanilla sauce or ice cream and served it with chilled white wine for desert, a sweeter addition could have made a difference.

Here are the ingredients I used:

For the dough:

• 400 g flour
• 150 ml lukewarm water
• 1 egg
• 1 pinch of salt
• 3 tbsp sunflower oil
  

For the filling:

• 800 g peeled and chopped apples
• 140 g sugar
• 50 g bread crumbs
• 70 g butter
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• cinnamon
• confectioners sugar
  

I baked the strudel at 190C for 1 hour, until golden. I also made a small bun, filled with pear jam, from the cuttings of the dough.

I am not perfectly happy with my first strudel, but making it was definitely fun and I will try it again. And of course, if all of the attempts at the perfect dough fail, one can always use filo pastry :)

Apple Pie

Lately I've been baking apple pies like crazy. It's the season of apples and the smell of baked apples and cinnamon is the most divine of smells in the kitchen. I like my fruit pies to contain lots and lots of juicy fruit, so here's the ultimate apple pie recipe I came up with today:

Ingredients:

• One 400 g pack of puff pastry
• Two big apples
• 80 g of sugar (more or less according to taste)
• cinnamon
• 20 g of flour

 

Peel the apples and cut them into thin slices. Mix the slices with the sugar, the cinnamon and a spoon of flour in a bowl. Roll out the pastry until it's about 4 mm thick. Measure and cut the excess width and length into thin bands. Spread the pastry into a suitable baking tin, fill in with the apples, arrange the grid of thin pastry bands and fold in the corners. Bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 20-30 min. Powder with sugar while hot.
The end product is a very juicy apple filling and sweet pastry crust, which combine together into a perfect cinnamon flavored bite.

Ябълков сладкиш

1 пакет хилядолистно тесто, 

2 големи ябълки, 

80 г захар (количеството варира според вкуса)

канела, 

лъжица брашно.

Обелете и нарежете ябълките на тънки филийки. В голяма купа ги объркайте добре със захарта, канелата и брашното. Брашното се добавя, за да сгъсти малко сока, който пускат ябълките и да му придаде леко кремообразна форма. Разточете тестото до дебелина 4 мм, премерете формата за печене и изрежете излишъците на тънки ленти. Разстелете тестото във формата, изсипете ябълките, оформете от изрезките решетка и подгънете краищата. Печете в предварително загрята фурна на 200С за 20-30 мин до зачервяване. Поръсете с пудра захар.