Apple Turnovers, Books Finished and Weekend to Come

This week I had a go at making my own Apple Turnovers. Never made them before, had no recipe to follow, but just thought I'd take a whack, anyway.

I'd made a pie the day before and had half a pack of puff pastry left over (and that had been lurking at the back of the freezer since Christmas), plus a couple of Bramley apples from the weekend before where I'd planned to make apple sauce with our roast pork, but instead baked half the apples with the meat.

So I simply peeled the two apples, chunked them, bunged them in a saucepan with a teaspoon of cinnamon, a good sprinkling of caster sugar and about half a cup of water. Brought it all to a boil, then waited until the apple was soft enough to crush with a potato masher. I left it to cool for about 30 minutes, until it was still slightly warm, but not completely cold.

Meanwhile, I rolled out my remaining pastry and cut it into two large squares, covered one triangular half with the apple, folded the other half of the pastry over, sealed the edges with milk wash and a fork to crimp the seams, and poked a couple of air holes in the top. Then I brushed milk over the surface and sprinkled with demerara sugar and a little more cinnamon. On to a baking tray, then baked for 30 mins or so at 200 degrees C. Job done.

As you can see, I overfilled them a bit and this one exploded slightly, but they were AMAZING. The demerara sugar on the top hardened into a lovely crust and was definitely the best bit, although getting it off my baking tray afterwards was not so much fun. This would easily have made four smaller turnovers, but Boyfriend and I are gannets. I do love it when an experiment turns out so well.



In other news, on Wednesday I finally finished reading Antonia Fraser's Six Wives of Henry VIII, which I started waaay back at the end of January. A rather sudden ending, but generally I enjoyed it, particularly discovering my new favourite word: "philoprogenitive"*. I have a bit of a reading bug now and might even get around to reading all those books I got for Christmas! I have, however, reserved myself a whole load of audiobooks through the library. I don't feel quite so guilty about reading if I can do something else at the same time. I've just started reading Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" (inspired by my recent LRRH prints) and I'm really digging her style.

Boyfriend is here this weekend (as he has been all week) and I'm very much looking forward to some time off with him. It's the PV of the PBK09 show tomorrow afternoon, so I'll take some photos to put up here. If I've got time to take any, in between all the schmoozing and air kissing, that is.

*This means to have a love of children, or to have a large family. Henry VIII, for example, divorced Catherine of Aragon because of his philoprogenitive desires. That is, because he wanted a son more than anything else. Get me, eh?