Rose Apple Pie

What happens if you mix chopped dough, cottage cheese casserole and apples?

As you may have already noticed, I adore baking with cottage cheese and apples (just read my articles about cottage cheese apple pie and cottage cheese casserole with apples and cashew). I'm also fond of tarts and I know that it takes much longer to cook them than charlotte, but they are very beautiful and it's not the least factor in their favor.

I have been thinking about rolling apples into a "rose" for a long time and it seemed to me that the crust plus apples were too boring. But then I realized that the sweet chopped dough, the variation of the cottage cheese casserole and apples would be a real bomb! Several attempts and finally...

P.S. Perhaps, I'll refresh this recipe sometime later, but the main idea won't change.

P.P.S. If the baking of the crust scares you - try cottage cheese apple pie.

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 200 g (1 cup + 3 heaped tbsp.) flour,
• 100 g unsalted butter,
• 50 g sugar (1⁄4 cup),
  It's better to use small sugar because it dissolves and doesn't crunch in the teeth.
• 1⁄4 tsp salt,
• 1 egg,
• (optionally) 2 tsp milk if the dough is dry.

The cottage cheese part of the filling:

• 200 g cottage cheese,
• 25 g sugar (2 tbsp),
• ½ tsp vanilla extract,
• 1 egg.

The apple part of the filling:

• 4 medium or 3 large apples,
• 50 g sugar (1⁄4 cup),
• 1 ½ tsp cinnamon.

Additionally:

Butter and flour for a baking dish, flour for rolling the dough.

Process:

The baking dish:

Grease the baking dish with butter and sprinkle it with flour.

The dough for the pie crust:

The pie crust is the sweet rough puff pastry dough. You mustn't forget that at each stage all the ingredients should be cold. If the dough is heated, you should cool it off - place it in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

• mix together flour and sugar,
• chop the dry mixture with butter using a blender or a knife,
• mix together an egg and salt,
• add the egg mixture to the crumbs and stir it, but the dough should stay heterogeneous,
• roll the dough till 3-5 mm thick and put it into the baking dish,
• make a lot of small holes in the dough with a fork and then place it into the freezer or refrigerator for at least 20 minutes.

The oven:

Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

Apples:

While the crust is cooling off and the oven is preheating, make the apple filling.

• wash the apples, cut it into halves and remove the core,
• slice each of these halves into thin slices (about 3mm. thick),
• mix together sugar and cinnamon,
• lay out the apple slices in several layers into a large container, sprinkling each of them with the sugar mixture,
• close the container with a cap and let it set for at least 45 minutes, the apples should become soft, stir them every 15 minutes.

Bake the pie crust (blind baking):

In theory, the cottage cheese filling isn't liquid, it means that it's possible to skip this step and don't bake the pie crust separately.

• take the dough out of the refrigerator and place a piece of parchment over top,
• put pie weights go on top of the parchment, make sure to spread the weights around so it's evenly distributed from the edge to the center,

• place the baking dish into the oven and bake for 15 minutes, until the edges are golden brown,
• when the crust is starting to bake, take it out of the oven and remove the pie weights,
• place the baking dish into the oven one more time and bake for 10 minutes, the crust should become golden brown,
• once done, take it out of the oven and let cool.

The oven:

While the pie crust is cooling and you are busy with cottage cheese filling reduce the oven temperature to 180º C.

The cottage cheese filling:

• in a large bowl beat together the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract,
• add cottage cheese and mix until the filling is smooth.

"Put together" the pie:

Before this step, the crust should have been cooled off, otherwise the filling in baked pie will be too dry.

• put the cottage cheese mixture into the crust and spread it evenly,

• drain the apple juice,
• put the apples over the cottage cheese filling, overlaying the slices upon each other spirally until you reach the center,
• in order to make a rose in the center - roll the slice into a tube shape.

Baking and serving:

• bake for 40 minutes in the at 180° until the apples become soft, If the apples begin to fry - put foil over the pie.
• once pie is ready, take it out of the oven and let cool for at least 1 hour,
• like any other apple pie it will become tastier if you serve it with a vanilla ice cream ball, yum!