This is the simplest recipe to do when you are testing puff pastry.

It makes delicious cookies

Ingredients

• a batch of puff pastry (here or store bough)
• egg and milk wash
• sugar

pre heat oven

Roll the puff pastry to a rectangle about 25 cm tall and 40 cm wide.

pour sugar on the dough.

Fold the top and bottom toward the middle, pour sugar.

repeat last instruction.

Finally fold in two and pour more sugar.

Cut the dough in 1 cm slices and put on a silicone sheet in a baking pan. Make sure there is plenty of space as they will get flatter.

With and egg and some milk, make an egg wash and spread with a brush on the cookies.

Cook about 15 minutes, turning half way.

Very few people make their own puff pastry thinking it’s too difficult.

It’s not. It takes some time but it’s not difficult. And most of the time is waiting for the dough to cool. Basically, it’s a layering of butter in a flour/water dough. When it cooks, the water in the butter steams up and that’s what makes the dough rise.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of unsalted butter at room temperature
• 19 ounces of flour
• 5 grams of salt
• 1 cup of water

The dough is in two parts: mostly water and flour and a little bit of butter (“detrempe”) on one side and mostly butter with a little bit of flour on the other.

Start by pouring 15 ounces of flour on a work surface or in a large mixing bowl. Add the salt and two ounces of butter and mix with a spatula. then add the water little by little and mix it. try and mix it gently with the spatula or a dough cutter instead of your hands so as not to knead it otherwise it will become too elastic. When the detrempe is ready, cover and put it in the fridge to rest.

Mix the rest of the butter with 4 ounces of flour. it makes a sticky mess. use the wax paper the butter came in to shape the butter in a flat rectangular shape. put it in the fridge.

After a couple of hours, take the detrempe out and roll it in the shape of a cross with a large square and 4 thinner arms. Put the butter in the middle and cover with the four arms.
The consistency of the detrempe and butter should be similar which will make rolling possible.

You are now going to do what is called turns. A turn is when you roll the dough down then fold it in thirds: fold the left third then right third over the middle. So you go from one square of dough to a 3×1 rectangle back to a square of dough. The dough is then turned 90 degrees either side and the process is repeated.

Puff pastry calls usually for 4 to 6 turns. Some people fold like a book: make a 4×1 rectangle, then fold each side toward the middle and finally fold in two. This is known as a turn and a half.

You cannot do 6 turns one after the other, usually after rolling and folding twice, then dough needs to be set in the fridge to rest and cool down for an hour or so.

Normandy is home to apple groves. Norman pie is thus a type of  apple pie.

Make a batch of pie dough (see here)
You will have enough for two pies.

Ingredients:

• Apples. at least 6. more is good.
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 cup sugar + 2 tbsp sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup ground almonds
• 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 600 ml heavy whipping cream and milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Pre heat over at 325.

Peel and cut the apples in eight. put them in a pan with a bit of sugar and 2 tbsp of butter. Cook uncovered until the apples are soft and nicely colored.

In the meantime, in a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and the cup of sugar. Add the almond meal and flour and mix. pour in the vanilla extract. Finally add the cream and milk. a total of 600 ml but you can vary how much milk and cream. i usually do about 400 ml heavy whipping cream and 200 ml milk.

Put the apple pieces to cool in a plate.

Roll the pie dough into two pie pans. I use the shallow ones with a removable bottom.

Place the apple pieces in the pans. Then pour the filling on top.

Bake for 40 minutes at 325.

Some people add calvados (apple alcohol) but it’s very good without too, so don’t buy a bottle of calvados just for that, we know what happens to opened bottles…