of puff pastry and apple pies

my archi blog is a bit difficult to upkeep here in kl. i am a terrible driver for one, and i get lost alot. i was planning to go to putrajaya and give everyone the low down on why it is such a dead place, but when dad gave me the directions i had to admit the likelihood of me finding my way there is less than me finding my way to timbuktoo...

so dad said: why do you want to go to putrajaya? i tell you why it's so dead:

1) not enough chinese. heh.
2) parking is terrible. did you know they want us to park outside putrajaya and take a shuttle inside? stupid lah.
3) there aren't enough covered walkways. and all the concrete makes it really HOT AND UNCOMFORTABLE.

well, there you go. future urban planners, take notice. read jane jacobs.

so i figured my work as such was done (will he remember he was going to take me to the Secret Garden (rooftop garden, oh so sustainable)) and i begun an obsession with this thing called puff pastry. i read food blogs. i looked at pictures. and then one lovely morning i woke up to the sound of the falling rain and the wonderful coolness that comes with it...and puff pastry was calling my name and that was the only thing (at the time) which could get me out of my bed and into the kitchen.

puff pastry is a tricky thing to make. it requires multiple refrigerations, and a good hand with the rolling pin and if my sis failed whence could i succeed? but maybe the heavens were smiling down upon moi...or something...

will you see those layers? *loves
please gasp with wonder and check out the recipe below and gasp with wonder again. this is the most complicated recipe i have ever attempted. it is not perfect, not like the puff pastry of the great patisserie...but i am content.

and puff pastry must not be wasted! neither must tart granny smiths just waiting to be nibbled.

the puff pastry was such a high mantainence thing to work with...it kept getting moist and had to be refrigerated and reworked. so i only managed a pic when the apple pie was done. don't it look pretty?

my puff pastry wasn't the puff-iest...but it did puff just a little! like magic!

yummm

did you know you never need to buy big bags of icing sugar? just put ordinary sugar into the food processor, and then you get gorgeous clouds of the lightest icing sugar...and then you sieve it over your apple pie and just die from the gorgeousness of it.

and naturally, after all the hard work, you take the first slice...

and you admire the puffiness. and then you finally take a taste.

recipe:
puff pastry
from foodbeam, the prettiest bloggie i have ever seen. oh that my puff pastry may look like hers one day!

apple pie
8 inch pie pan
(A) 8 granny smith apples, cored and thinly sliced, 2Tsugar, 1t cinnamon powder
(B) half the puff pastry that you made with the recipe above, separated into two parts.
one egg, beaten, for egg wash

1. place (A) in pan and cook slowly under small flame until it becomes soft and brown and mushy. place in refrigerator and cool. preheat oven to 200C.
2. roll out one part of your puff pastry (do be careful. i didn't plan to have a criss cross design on top, initially hehe) until it is slightly larger than your pie pan. carefully put the rolled pastry on your pie pan and refrigerate for a while. if your pastry looks wettish put it in the refrigerator. it means your butter layers are melting and that is bad.
3. put your apple purree into the pie. roll out the second part of your puff pastry. cut it into even rectangles and criss cross it over your pie. refrigerate at intervals if needed. clean it up until it looks like a pie. egg wash your pie.
4. bake in the oven for 20 min at 200C.