In my previous post for strawberry galettes, I mentioned that it was @lilmssquirrel and her excellent 366 Recipe Challenge blog that inspired me to undergo the epic pastry making marathon that was Dan Lepard’s all-butter English puff pastry. One of the things that @lilmssquirrel made with her puff pastry was Dan’s apple turnovers, also from his book Short and Sweet.
@lilmssquirrel ended her blog post with the immortal words “Seriously, if you have time to try the puff recipe, you need to make these.” Never one to disobey an instruction, I compliantly agreed.
If you discount the eight hours or so spent making the puff pastry, these little beauties are a doddle. And they taste amazing too. Of course if you don’t fancy losing a day of your life to making your own pastry, you could always use a well-known supermarket brand but I can’t guarantee they will taste as good without the blood, sweat and tears 
I jest……
No seriously, these are fabulous pastries which take very little effort. The apples are cooked down with a little butter, sugar, lemon, vanilla, cloves and cinnamon (which I omitted as I am not a fan) and then this filling is wrapped in puff pastry and baked for 30 minutes. That’s it. Simple as. If you fancy trying them yourself, then you can find the recipe on the Guardian here although I do notice that it is slightly different to the one in Short and Sweet. Notably, it misses out the egg white and icing sugar paste which you brush the pastries with prior to baking. Which is a crying shame as this gives the turnovers their scrumptious crackly sugar crust.
Dan also mentions that you can freeze the turnovers once filled so that they are ready to bake whenever you need a quick dessert for entertaining or just a speedy sugar fix. Apple turnovers on tap. Now that sounds like a great idea.
