TWD: Flaky Apple Turnovers

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Flaky Apple Turnovers was chosen by Julie of Someone's in the Kitchen. For whatever reason I did not get my act together and make these over the weekend, when the timing and lighting conditions would have been more favorable. So I found myself scrambling to get these done and photographed on Tuesday, which (fair warning) will be obvious from the quality of the photos and the post.


Dorie calls the sour cream turnover pastry a "miracle," because it is rolled, chilled, and folded in a way that encourages it to gently puff. Sadly, I tend to be a miracle killer when it comes to pastry, but I was very intrigued by this dough and hoped for the best.

I read the recipe and saw that the dough calls for three (3) sticks of butter.

[QUIZ: How annoying is it to watch someone who voluntarily signed up for a weekly baking group act horrified by the quantity of butter that she is using on a weekly basis? ___ kinda ___ really ___ really really.]

I decided to quarter the recipe, because my family of five (and only three sure-bet turnover eaters) did not need 16 turnovers, and because somehow three ounces of butter seemed less menacing than three sticks, even though the per-turnover butter quantity would be exactly the same as if I went with the full three stick version. Nope, deep down, I wasn't fooled. But I used light sour cream because I had a fridge full of it, thanks to a 3 for $5 special at Western. I didn't need three 16 oz containers of light sour cream (who does?) but I couldn't afford not to buy it at that price. I wasn't sure how light sour cream would work in the recipe, but decided to have faith that all the butter would carry me home in the turnover fat department.

The dough is a simple mixture of sour cream, sugar, flour, salt and, of course, butter. The butter gets cut into the flour with a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingers. I do not have a pastry blender, and even one knife at a time is plenty dangerous for me, so I decided to follow Dorie's lead and use my fingers. Worked like a charm! I achieved that coarse meal consistency, although there were still a few large gobs of butter in there. Dorie's instructions suggested that that was preferable to over mixing, so I left them, and then added the sour cream/sugar mixture.

After a couple of rounds of chilling, rolling, and folding like a business letter, my turnovers were filled and ready to bake:



I didn't expect to see anything as dramatic as puff pastry, but I was hoping to get flaky dough with some decent puffage* (*probably not a word).

Verdict?

Success!!! We LOVED these! They were puffingly* (*actual word) flaky:



The dough was wonderful - it is indeed miraculous; Dorie is not kidding. The texture was perfect, and it was not overly sweet, so it complemented the apple/sugar/cinnamon mixture very well. My hubs raved about these and said that they reminded him of a fried pie (that's a compliment) but without the grease. As expected, David, Caroline and I were the only ones who ate these. Someday, perhaps my older two children will look back with regret on those days when mom baked crazy delicious things multiple times a week, only to be rebuffed in favor of Transformers fruit snacks. Until then, more for the rest of us!



Thank you for this fabulous fall pick, Julie! And thank you Dorie for yet another incredible dessert.