Crabby Apple Puffs

This is another recipe of my own invention, made by messing with existing recipes that already worked for me (which doesn't actually require any skill or creativity and makes "recipe of my own invention" savage hyperbole, but it makes me feel like the White Knight in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There).

I call them Crabby Apple Puffs because I soaked the apples in lemon juice, making them quite sour, before pastrisizing them (yes, I do make up my own words often, thankyouverymuch). A lot of the lemon juice baked off, leaving some of them tasting like plain old apple puffs, but a few retained their lemony goodness and they were nice and sour.



When I accidentally used puff pastry instead of phyllo dough for my Halloween cupcakes, I also accidentally cut up far more than I needed. I thawed the extra strips out on Sunday and soaked them in a mixture of melted margarine and brown sugar, like the original cupcake recipe instructed.

The night before, I sliced up four Granny Smith apples and soaked them in about one half cup lemon juice with two teaspoons cinnamon mixed in, inspired by the raw apple pie I made a while ago.

The apples soaked overnight and the dough soaked long enough for me to finish with my zucchini and tomatoes. Then I took the apples, wrapped them in the dough, brushed the pastries with some of the leftover marinade from the apples and popped them in the oven at 350 degrees until they seemed done. The end!

Done was when I tried to put a fork in one of the pastries and everything went mush. I couldn't tell when the pastry had browned because it was covered with cinnamon. And it never got really crisp because of the margarine (which I'd totally skip next time). But the apples were really soft, so they had to get out of the oven.

I cooled them on a rack covered in paper towel to absorb most of the grease from the margarine and they got firmer and crisper as they cooled.

My family, several of my friends and I all ate them up the day they were baked. My mother, brother and I liked them a lot (we all love sour things) and no one threw up from them or anything, so I guess that's victory, right?

Unfortunately, I didn't pay close enough attention to the amounts I used of things or how long I kept them in the oven to write up a formal recipe, but there are loads of apple pastry recipes out there (e.g.: The Heart-Shaped Apple Galettes in Veganomicon), so I'm sure it's no great loss. I will, however, try to be more diligent while playing with my food in the future.

The filling:



Raw:



They look kind of like weird meat dumplings to me now. Ew.