I love baked apples! Warm from the oven served with a dollop of cream they make the best comfort food. But wrapped in shortcrust pastry they become a beautiful, elegant dessert.
Sweet apples stuffed with a fragrant pumpkin spice filling and then wrapped in shortcrust pastry. Baked until golden outside and slightly soft inside. It’s a relatively quick dessert, prepared with few simple ingredients:
- Apples, I used Royal Gala but you can use Bramley or Granny Smith.
- Shortcrust pastry, homemade or store bought
- Biscuits, I used malted biscuits but amaretti are great too.
- Raisins.
- Nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds…etc).
- Mixed peel.
- Muscovado sugar.
- Brandy or Rum.
- Spices. I used pumpkin spice but cinnamon is perfect too.
How to make baked apples
- Soak the raisins into the liqueur for at least 30 minutes.
- Prepare the filling. Put all the dry ingredients for the filling into a food processor and pulse few times until you have a rough mixture. Then add the soaked raisins with all the liqueur and the mixed peel.
- Peel and core the apples. This is the tricky part: you have to be careful to not break the apples. Use an apple corer and remember to reserve the stalks for the decoration.
- Roll out the shortcrust pastry and using cookie cutters cut out small discs for the base of the apples and larger discs to wrap them.
- Stuff each apple with the filling.
- Place each apple on a small pastry disc,cover with the larger disc and wrap the pastry around the fruits.
- Decorate with pastry leaves, brush with egg wash and bake in the preheated oven to 180°C until golden.
- Put a stalk on each apple and serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.
Pastry wrapped baked apples
Ingredients
- ready-rolled shortcrust pastry: 350 grams
- apples: 4
- malted biscuits: 10
- dark muscovado sugar: 20 grams
- toasted hazelnuts: 1 tbsp
- walnut kernels: 6
- peeled almonds: 1 tbsp
- mixed peel: 1 tbsp
- raisins: 1 tbsp
- Brandy or Rum: 3 tbsp
- pumpkin spice to taste
- eggs: 1
Instructions
- Put the raisins in a small bowl and pour in the Brandy. Leave to soak for at least 30 minutes.
- Now prepare the filling for the pastry wrapped baked apples. Put in a food processor the biscuits, Muscovado sugar, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts and pumpkin spice (I used 1 tsp of it but adjust it to your taste) then pulse until you have rough mixture, not too fine. You should still see pieces of nuts and biscuits. Add the candied peel and the raisins with all the soaking Brandy. Mix using a spoon and set aside.
- Peel the apples and remove the cores using an apple corer. Then widen the created hole using a small knife. Reserve the stalks for the decoration.
- Roll out the pastry and using 2 different cookie cutters cut out: 4 discs 1 cm larger than the apple base and 4 discs 4 cm larger than the apple diameter.
- Place each apple onto the smaller discs.
- Then fill the centre with the biscuit filling.
- Cover each apple with one of the larger discs and wrap it around the fruit pinching the pastry to the bottom disc. Cut a small hole on the top to let the steam out while baking.
- Cut some decorative pastry leaves and add them to the top of each apples.
- Brush with egg wash and bake into the preheated oven to 180 °C for about 15-20 minutes or until golden. Serve warm, with icing sugar and a spoon of cream or ice cream.
