Easy Apple Puffed Pastry

Having grown up in Seattle, I am an apple girl. Here's an easy way to make a fancy apple pastry that is pretty low in fat and sugar. It takes just a few minutes to assemble TWO rectangular pastries. For this, we used delectable, colorful Pink Lady apples. I saw a video of Ree Drummond, thepioneerwoman.com, making this fast dessert and was inspired to try it at CATS. Some supervision with apple-slicing is important. We're going for thin slices, and the skin is left on, which can be hard to cut through with a dull knife (we use tame knives.) I tell the kids to cut apple halves with the flat side solidly planted on the cutting board for safety, as shown here. Slices don't have to be perfect or even uniform. They should just be on the thinner side.

Dessert

Ingredients

1 sheet puff pastry, thawed 40 minutes (half of a 17.3 oz. box, i.e., Pepperidge Farm, which I only find at Diablo Foods. (Not Phyllo dough.)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon or allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
Juice from 1/2 lemon
3 colorful apples – washed, unpeeled. (Can mix types or sub a sliced pear for one apple)
Optional:
Low-fat caramel topping
1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans or other nuts
1/4 cup raisins, or 1/4 cup blueberries

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Put the thawed, folded puff pastry sheet onto a baking pan lined with parchment, or use foil sprayed with nonstick spray. Unfold gently to make one big rectangle .
Cut the rectangle the long way, down the middle, to make two narrow rectangles about 5 x 10″. You can pat it or even roll it out if needed. Try to keep the dough evenly thick.
Slice your apples and put in a large bowl. Add the brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, lemon juice and optional raisins or blueberries. Mix gently to coat all fruit.
Lay out the apple slices in an overlapping pattern, in a straight line across the short end of the pastry rectangles. Continue layering all the way down, covering the dough to just inside the edges.
Bake for 20 minutes. Keep an eye on your pastry for the last five minutes so that it doesn’t burn.
Slide the pastry onto a serving platter immediately. Top with chopped nuts and a drizzle of caramel sauce if you like.

More Information

KID COMMENTS:

“Let’s do it again but put chocolate sauce on it!” ( We pretty much get this comment every week.)

“What if we put one layer of pastry on top of the other one? (This probably wouldn’t bake up crisp, but you could layer two BAKED pastries… for more decadence.)

“Too much cinnamon! (Batch 1) We reduced it for Batch 2. “Cinnamon was perfect!”

“It needs ice cream.”

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