Had an extra apple when I did the SweeTango article, so decided to do a a small pastry. What is pictured is a rough puff pastry simply folded up over the filling.

Ruff Puff

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 lb cold butter
• 1/4 cup cold liquid. (As pictured, it’s half rum and half milk.)
• 0 – 2 Tbsp confectioners (powdered) sugar, to taste.

The liquids

This can seeming be anything. Vodka, milk, cream, egg, rum, water, whatever. If you were making bread, the amount of fat in the liquid might make a difference, but considering all the butter, not such a big issue. Be aware though, a normal egg is about 1/4 cup all on its own, so if you want to make a double batch.

Sizes

This recipe rolls out to about a 12” disk. Which if you fold in the outer couple of inches will give you about an 8” galette, which will hold a bit more than one apple. I started with 1 1/2 apples and ate a few pieces,

The filling

In this case, it was about 1 1/4 apples, sliced thin, tossed in about a 1/4 cup of brown sugar, a tsp of cinnamon, and a few shakes of ground nutmeg. A spoonful of cornstarch wouldn’t be a bad idea, but that depends on how you like the texture of the filling.

Steps for the crust

• Dice the butter into 1/4” cubes, spread the little cubes out onto a sheet tray or something and put in the freezer for a few minutes.
• Mix your desired liquids together and put in the fridge to be cold.
• Put the flour in a decent sized mixing bowl (with the sugar if desired)
• Dump in the cold butter and cut up with a dough cutter, or a couple of butter knives if that’s what you have.
• You want to cut the butter up a bit. It doesn’t need to get too small, since you’re going to fold and laminate anyway, but you do want the bits of butter to be small enough to gather together.
• Sprinkle in the liquid, while tossing/stirring with a fork. You’re basically just looking to moisten the flour, not soak it. If you stir it all in and there still seems to be a lot of powder left, you can add another spoonful of ice water or two.
• Gather the very crumbly dough together into a ball, and wrap in plastic wrap, and stick it in the fridge. It will need to sit for an hour. That will let the liquid permeate the dough, and let the flour relax and keep the butter cold.
• Take it out of the fridge, and roll it out on a floured counter until you get it a rectangle about 3 times wider than it is tall and about a 1/4” thick or less, fold into 3rds. Again, roll it out and again, fold into thirds. Immediately wrap the dough back up and stick it back in the fridge for another 45 minutes.
• Repeat the previous step twice. When you’ve done, you’ll have done 6 folds all together.
• Preheat the oven to 400°F
• To make the galette pictured, out of a single batch, roll out into a 12” circle, pile the filling into the center, leaving a 2” border around the edge. I recommend rolling it out onto a sheet of parchment paper. Fold the edges in over the filling and if you like, brush the exposed crust with an egg wash, a milk wash would also work if you happen to be out of eggs. You could sprinkle the crust with sugar at this point.
• Bake on sheet pan for about 30 minutes or until the apples are done. Check with a toothpick to see if the apples are fully cooked. If the crust starts to over brown, put a bit of foil over it.
• Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.