A special visit was to come and I wanted something nice to treat this friend of mine. Apple pie is my first idea as a typical winter cake.
Apple pie has a long tradition in some countries. And some are really famous for their cakes. Originally apple pie was made with apples, raisin, pears, figs and spices and ‘colored’ with saffron (a 1381 recipe from England). And had NO sugar! What seems to be logical as apples, pears and raisins are already sweet.
I made a Dutch style apple pie with cinnamon but no lemon juice in the apple sauce. In Sweden instead they prepare an apple crumble and serve often with vanilla ice cream or custard.
When my friend left the cake was gone as well. I decided to make an apple jalousie – strange name in my ears as a jalousie sounds to me like a window shutter. But it gets the point honestly.
To do the recipe I took my simple shortcrust pastry, filled it with juicy apple sauce and covered all with the shortcrust pastry.
We had this cake in the morning for breakfast as in the evening it is too heavy and during daytime we spent our time out. It was so perfect even after a few days.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease two small cake pans (12 cm/4.7”).
- Put all the four ingredients for the crust together, mix them well and work them to a ball. Put this dough ball into a saran wrap and let it stay for one hour in a cool place. Peel and clean three apples of your choice, cut into pieces and together with the honey and cinnamon put all into a sauce pan. Cook until soft – around 15 to 20 minutes, depends by the apples. Put the apple sauce aside for the cakes.
- Now unwrap the dough and roll it out into a thin sheet, 0.5/2” thick. Cover the bottom of the cake pans and put a margin around as the filling will get around 4 cm/1.4” high. Now pick the bottom with a fork, fill in the apple sauce and cover all with another sheet of dough. You don't need to 'fix' it really well, it will not open during baking time.
- Bake it for 30 minutes or until golden outside and the tooth pick proof remains clean.
- Let the cake cool out on a cake rack.
The apple sauce with cinnamon is symbol for the winter season to me. Of course you can omit it or change t with some other spices you like most. Other fruits would be great as well. Would be great with fig sauce for example. You can add some walnuts or almonds as well, very 'christmassy'.
I put some icing sugar on it but we had it also without and it was great.
As I don't use a fridge I let the cake out at room temperature. After 4 days it was still perfectly fresh. Of course my kitchen is not warm at 25°C/80F.
Shortcake dough is easy to do and no problem to do in advance. So in case suddenly guests are calling they will be there in an hour – this will be a quick and perfect cake option.
*All purpose flour I make this way (1 kg):
600 g almond flour
400 g starch (best tapioca)
Any 100 g of this mix I add 3 g of arrowroot flour
The last photo of this blog post is a really cool one!
Thank you Andreas!