Apple Pie Gujiyas – Diwali’s Special

The recipe is divided into 2 main components :

• Pastry dough

• Apple Pie Filling

Ingredients

Pastry Dough

• All purpose flour- 2 cups
• unsalted butter (very cold/frozen and cut into cubes)- 3/4th cup
• Pinch of salt (Do not add salt if you are using salted butter)
• cold water- 2 tablespoon
• cinnamon sugar (make your own by mixing 1 tablespoon of sugar with 1/2 tsp of cinnamon powder)- 1 tablespoon
• Milk for brushing the gujiyas on top

Apple Pie Filling

• 2 apples
• Fat pinch of Cinnamon
• pinch of Nutmeg
• Orange marmalade – 2 tablespoons
• lemon juice- 1 tsp
• white sugar- 2 tablespoons
• brown sugar- 2 tablespoons
• vanilla essence- 1 tsp
• A knob of butter
• Aromatics (1 cinnamon stick, 2-3 cloves)
• corn starch- 1 tablespoon (dissolve it in 1 tablespoon of water)

Equipment

Couple of mixing bowls, Food processor, spoons, baking tray, Oven, Cling film, gujiya molds

Method

1. Let us begin with preparing the pastry dough. For that, sieve flour and salt in the food processor and pulse it to mix the two.
2. Now add in the cold butter cubes and pulse it a few more times till the mixture looks bit like bread crumbs.
3. Now, slowly start to add water in it (1 tsp at a time) and process till till the water is soaked by the flour. At this stage the flour would not look like dough but it would come together eventually.
4. Check if the flour has started to clump up. For that, take some dough mix in one of your fist and press. If it clumps together, the pastry dough is ready.
5. Transfer the dough on a clean. flour dusted working surface and work with your hands to bring the mix together into a semi dough. Wrap this dough in a cling film and refrigerate for atleast an hour. The Pastry dough is ready.
6. Meanwhile, let us make the apple pie filling. For this, take a skillet and add in the butter. Once the butter has melted, add in the aromatics and saute for a couple of seconds. Next, add in the remaining ingredients (except corn starch) and cook till the apples are tender. You might end up with wet mixture.
7. Finally, add in the corn starch mix and mix well. This will thicken up the apple filling. Once done, remove from heat and let it cool down completely.

Baking the Gujiyas

1. Pre-heat the oven at 350F/180C
2. Take out the pastry dough from the refrigerator after an hour and divide the dough into desired number of pieces. Using a rolling pin, flatten each dough into a circle and place the circle in the gujiya mold.
3. Add the filling as required and using the gujiya mold, seal the edges to form the gujiya shape. Repeat with all the dough.
4. Once all the gujiyas are prepared, we will bake them.
5. For this, place each gujiya one inch apart from each other on pre-greased baking tray and brush them with milk.
6. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top of each of the gujiya and bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes. Freshly baked Apple pie Gujiyas are ready !!