Spiral Apple Pies 螺絲蘋果酥盒
So here’s my first experiment after learning a few tricks from the ‘Chinese Dim Sum in Pictures’ cookbook. It is my version of apple pies with an Asian twist, ie. using the Chinese spiral pastry to make the apple pies. I have done spiral pastry before, but always using the ‘individually-wrapped-and-rolled method’, referred to as ‘xiaobaosu’ (小包酥) in Chinese, where you divide the water dough and short dough into individual portion first, then wrap each short dough portion inside each water dough portion, after which you need to pin and roll each portion to get the layering effect. After reading the other method taught in this cookbook, referred to as ‘dabaosu’ (大包酥), or the ‘once-wrapped-and-rolled method’, where you wrap the whole short dough inside the whole water dough first, then the rolling and stacking to get the layering effect before dividing into individual portion. This method seems to be easier and faster, so I was itching to try this method to make something.
The next question is what to make? I didn’t feel like doing the traditional Chinese filling like bean paste or such, so I turned my attention to my favourite dessert pie, which is apple pie, of course! Well, will this work? The only answer is to try it out. I looked through one of my other cookbooks from Taiwan which has an ‘Apple Pies’ recipe (though I would say they are more like apple turnovers than pies) with a slightly different filling from the traditional apple pies. It uses much more cornflour and less water to cook the apple to get a custardy apple filling. With that, I have my inspiration and came up with this east meets west Spiral Apple Pies recipe.
The result is very good taste-wise, but appearance-wise I am not 100% happy because I think I made a few mistakes which needed to be rectified next time. First I used the wrong side of some of the pastry pieces when wrapping the pies, therefore the spiral on the surface was not very obvious. Then I egg-washed the surface which further reduced the spiral lines, as I think the egg-wash ended up binding the pastry together. Lastly, I think I need to play around with the baking temperature and time a bit to reduce the burned edges of the pies.
Spiral pastry techniques learnt from ‘簡化北方酥皮基本做法’ in ‘中國點心製作圖解’ by 江獻珠, published by 萬里機構．飲食天地出版社, 1994 (2003 reprint edition).
Filling adapted from the recipe ‘蘋果派’ in ‘精緻點心DIY’ by 游純雄 and 王志雄, published by 暢文出版社, 1998 (2002 reprint edition).
Makes 12 individual pies
[Ingredients]
Water Dough:
300g (2 cups) plain flour
pinch salt
60g icing sugar
110g ghee or shortening
150ml water, adjust as necessary
Short Dough:
180g plain flour
40g (4 tablespoons) cornflour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
110g ghee or shortening
Filling:
2 (about 300g net) Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced
80g granulated sugar
20g (2 tablespoons) cornflour
20g (2 tablespoons) custard powder
20g (2 tablespoons) milk powder
150ml water
http://cafeoftheeast.blogspot.com/
[Preparation]
Filling:
Put diced apples in a saucepan, add sugar and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until softened but not mashy. Dissolve cornflour, custard powder and milk powder in water. Pour the liquid mixture into the softened apples and stirring continuously until thickened. Set aside to cool completely.
Pastry:
1. For the water dough: put flour, salt, sugar and ghee in a mixing bowl, slowly add just enough water to form a soft but non-sticky dough. Knead until smooth, form into a ball, cover and put into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes before using.
2. For the short dough: mix all ingredients and knead into a soft dough. If it is too soft, chill in the refrigerator to harden a bit. If it is too hard, knead it a bit more until you get soft dough about the same flexibility as the water dough. It is important that the pliability of the short dough should be about the same as the water dough when making the spiral pastry.
3. To make spiral pastry using the dabaosu (大包酥) method (refer to the step-by-step images above): Take the water dough out from the fridge, knead briefly and form into a ball. Cut a cross halfway through the dough (#1). Press the four quarters of the dough out (#2) and pin it out into a sheet using a rolling pin. Put the short dough, shape into a rough square to fit, in the middle of the pin-out water dough (#3). Fold the overlapped water dough to enclose the short dough, seal the edges (#4). With the rolling pin, press down the dough in a crisscross fashion to flatten the dough (#5) then roll it out (#6). Fold the top 1/3 of the dough down (#7) and the bottom 1/3 up to get three layers (#8). Turn the 3-layer dough 90° (#9) and repeat the pressing, rolling and layering process (#10, 11, 12 and 13) three more times. Press the dough down in the crisscross fashion again and pin it out to get a thin rectangular sheet (#14), you can trim the edges to get a perfect rectangle if you desired (I did not trim the edges). Roll it up Swiss roll style and divide the roll into 24 portions.
4. To wrap the Spiral Apple Pies: Take 2 portions of the finished dough, flatten with your palm and roll them out into 2 spiral discs respectively. Put about one heaped tablespoon of the filling in the middle of one of the disc and cover it with the other disc, making sure the side with the clearer spiral lines is facing outward. Pinch and seal the edges, with the aid of a little water if necessary. With your thumb and forefinger, work along the edges by pinching and folding a rope edge all the way around. Repeat with the rest of the dough pieces and filling.
5. Preheat oven to about 200-220°C (I used 220°C this time but found the edges slightly burnt). Put the finished Spiral Apple Pies into the oven and bake for about 18-20 minutes.
[Variation]
Seashell Apple Turnovers
Instead of wrapping the filling sandwiched between two layers of dough, put the filling in the middle of a roll-out spiral disc (preparation step 4), fold the pastry over to half-moon shape then pinch and fold the rope edges to make 24 turnovers.
[Note]
Please note this recipe uses 1 standard cup of 250ml, 1 tablespoon of 20ml and 1 teaspoon of 5ml.
The next question is what to make? I didn’t feel like doing the traditional Chinese filling like bean paste or such, so I turned my attention to my favourite dessert pie, which is apple pie, of course! Well, will this work? The only answer is to try it out. I looked through one of my other cookbooks from Taiwan which has an ‘Apple Pies’ recipe (though I would say they are more like apple turnovers than pies) with a slightly different filling from the traditional apple pies. It uses much more cornflour and less water to cook the apple to get a custardy apple filling. With that, I have my inspiration and came up with this east meets west Spiral Apple Pies recipe.
The result is very good taste-wise, but appearance-wise I am not 100% happy because I think I made a few mistakes which needed to be rectified next time. First I used the wrong side of some of the pastry pieces when wrapping the pies, therefore the spiral on the surface was not very obvious. Then I egg-washed the surface which further reduced the spiral lines, as I think the egg-wash ended up binding the pastry together. Lastly, I think I need to play around with the baking temperature and time a bit to reduce the burned edges of the pies.
Spiral pastry techniques learnt from ‘簡化北方酥皮基本做法’ in ‘中國點心製作圖解’ by 江獻珠, published by 萬里機構．飲食天地出版社, 1994 (2003 reprint edition).
Filling adapted from the recipe ‘蘋果派’ in ‘精緻點心DIY’ by 游純雄 and 王志雄, published by 暢文出版社, 1998 (2002 reprint edition).
Makes 12 individual pies
[Ingredients]
Water Dough:
300g (2 cups) plain flour
pinch salt
60g icing sugar
110g ghee or shortening
150ml water, adjust as necessary
Short Dough:
180g plain flour
40g (4 tablespoons) cornflour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
110g ghee or shortening
Filling:
2 (about 300g net) Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced
80g granulated sugar
20g (2 tablespoons) cornflour
20g (2 tablespoons) custard powder
20g (2 tablespoons) milk powder
150ml water
http://cafeoftheeast.blogspot.com/
[Preparation]
Filling:
Put diced apples in a saucepan, add sugar and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until softened but not mashy. Dissolve cornflour, custard powder and milk powder in water. Pour the liquid mixture into the softened apples and stirring continuously until thickened. Set aside to cool completely.
Pastry:
1. For the water dough: put flour, salt, sugar and ghee in a mixing bowl, slowly add just enough water to form a soft but non-sticky dough. Knead until smooth, form into a ball, cover and put into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes before using.
2. For the short dough: mix all ingredients and knead into a soft dough. If it is too soft, chill in the refrigerator to harden a bit. If it is too hard, knead it a bit more until you get soft dough about the same flexibility as the water dough. It is important that the pliability of the short dough should be about the same as the water dough when making the spiral pastry.
3. To make spiral pastry using the dabaosu (大包酥) method (refer to the step-by-step images above): Take the water dough out from the fridge, knead briefly and form into a ball. Cut a cross halfway through the dough (#1). Press the four quarters of the dough out (#2) and pin it out into a sheet using a rolling pin. Put the short dough, shape into a rough square to fit, in the middle of the pin-out water dough (#3). Fold the overlapped water dough to enclose the short dough, seal the edges (#4). With the rolling pin, press down the dough in a crisscross fashion to flatten the dough (#5) then roll it out (#6). Fold the top 1/3 of the dough down (#7) and the bottom 1/3 up to get three layers (#8). Turn the 3-layer dough 90° (#9) and repeat the pressing, rolling and layering process (#10, 11, 12 and 13) three more times. Press the dough down in the crisscross fashion again and pin it out to get a thin rectangular sheet (#14), you can trim the edges to get a perfect rectangle if you desired (I did not trim the edges). Roll it up Swiss roll style and divide the roll into 24 portions.
4. To wrap the Spiral Apple Pies: Take 2 portions of the finished dough, flatten with your palm and roll them out into 2 spiral discs respectively. Put about one heaped tablespoon of the filling in the middle of one of the disc and cover it with the other disc, making sure the side with the clearer spiral lines is facing outward. Pinch and seal the edges, with the aid of a little water if necessary. With your thumb and forefinger, work along the edges by pinching and folding a rope edge all the way around. Repeat with the rest of the dough pieces and filling.
5. Preheat oven to about 200-220°C (I used 220°C this time but found the edges slightly burnt). Put the finished Spiral Apple Pies into the oven and bake for about 18-20 minutes.
[Variation]
Seashell Apple Turnovers
Instead of wrapping the filling sandwiched between two layers of dough, put the filling in the middle of a roll-out spiral disc (preparation step 4), fold the pastry over to half-moon shape then pinch and fold the rope edges to make 24 turnovers.
[Note]
Please note this recipe uses 1 standard cup of 250ml, 1 tablespoon of 20ml and 1 teaspoon of 5ml.
Labels: Asian Pastries
posted by SeaDragon @ 3.4.05
6 Comments:
Appearence wise, I don't see any problem. They are very well presente. Well done! Look forward to seeing your recipe. I think I want to get one of the books you introduced in the previous post too.
Hi SeaDragon,
Does any of the books have old style 莲蓉包 Ling Yong Pao receipe?
heres a picture
http://news.xinhuanet.com/food/2004-05/17/xinsrc_2406011411161253060555.gif
From this page
http://cn.forum.auctions.yahoo.com/msg.html?cate=3004&topic=3774
Thanks
Papercook
Thanks Jo,
The pictures I posted are the best two that showed some spiral, the others cannot see the spiral layers at all, lol.
Papercook,
One of the books has a recipe for 莲蓉包, but the skin is not layered like the pic you linked......
That article mentioned using half-proved dough wrapping an oil dough to make the layering. I've got a recipe for this type of pau skin, downloaded from the net quite a while ago, it was from one of the China sites but can't remember where now, so I'll PM you the recipe at Jo's if you want to try it out, it uses dough starter. I haven't try the recipe yet, so don't know how reliable it is.
Hi
Please let me try the recipe : D
i posted this question over at makansutra and got recipe uing baking powder which didn't work for me
http://www.makansutra.com/forums/singapore/viewtopic.php?t=7227&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
but the principle is similar to what u described. I think the recipe u have has more potential as its using a yeast proven dough
Hi SD
I recently came across your BLOG and what can I say! You have such such talents for baking, cooking etc. I am only new to the cooking scene. Could you please tell me what shortening is? (ie oil, butter copha ?) I live in Perth WA. Thanking you in advance.
Ange
Hi Ange,
Welcome!
Shortening is man-made fat which is not available in Australia, it usually refers to the 'Crisco' brand shortening made in the US. As it is 100% fat, the only substitute here in Oz is either lard or ghee (clarified butter). Remember butter contains at least 10% water, so is not always a suitable substitute.
Copha is solidified coconut oil, although it is a vegetable shortening, I find it very hard to soften and feels like 'wax', so I don't like using it. Although if the recipe calls for melting it before using, then it is alright. HTH.
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