Greetings Gastronauts, this is Keef Cooks, I'm Keef ,and today we're going
to do something that involves apples again because we have got a garden full of apples.
But it'll be wonderful - I'm going to make apfel strudel.
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Before we start, a couple of shoutouts. One to William Doherty who made a magnificent donation
recently - thank you very much - much appreciated. And also to my new Patreon patron,
Cheryl Adkins. Thank you! This was requested by Mrs Keef Cooks. Yes!
Who remembered that we've got a garden full of apples that really need to be used before they go rotten.
So I made an apple pie the other day but I've never made apple strudel so that would
be fun - bit of an adventure. It looks very interesting and
apparently it's not German, it's Austrian. But all those countries around there that used
to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they all claim it as their own.
So I'm not getting into that particular argument. I do know there's an awful lot of variation
on the recipe but I'm going to try as always to make it as realistic as I can.
Anyway, if you enjoy this video, give it a like, share, subscribe, etc.
Very important, share - need to get the numbers up!
And let's get on with it - apple strudel!
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So the first job is to make the filling because we won't have time to do that once we've got
the very thin pastry made. Which is going to be like phyllo
pastry. You can buy that but I'm going to be a little bit crazy and make it myself again.
So I've got some apfels from t'garden. Probably about one and a half kilos is what you need.
And you want tart apples - sour tasting apples - not sweet ones and not ones
that will go mushy when you cook them. And they’ve just come out OF the garden
some of them have been pre-masticated so they need a good rinse in water.
Then they need peeling - actually just cut the top and tails off because they
make the peeling a bit easier. And then slice them into little
mini batons which might be called batonets, but don't quote me on that,
I might have just made that up. We need the zest of one lemon, unwaxed.
Then we want the juice of that lemon as well.
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They're very pippy these lemons!
Normally, well you might get two or three or four or five but there's about 20 there.
So when you've got some chopped up apple, pop it in a bowl,
and we'll just pour the lemon juice over it and that'll stop it going brown.
Not much juice in that lemon either - all pips, no juice.
Now an optional thing in the filling is some kind of dried fruit like raisins.
If you don't like them leave them out or use sultanas or currants or whatever.
But if you do use them they need to be hydrated
and one of your options for that is rum - also brandy works very well.
If you don't want to use booze then you can use orange juice - the choice is yours.
So I've got 50 grams of raisins and just enough of this to cover them.
And leave that for half an hour or more until the raisins are nice and plump.
Okay I'm going to make the pastry or dough so I've got 285 grams of plain flour,
150 ml of lukewarm water, 60 ml of cooking oil - a neutral oil, that's sunflower.
Half a teaspoon of salt and a small egg. Well,
we don't get small eggs anymore. It's a medium egg. Okay, mixy mixy. Mix in the salt.
And whack it on your stand mixer with
the dough hook or do it by hand if you don't have this kind of equipment. Good luck!
Add the egg.
And the oil
And the water.
And again I'm mixing it for about 10 minutes. You want it to be nice and smooth and elastic.
Oh I'm exhausted after that. There we go now I'm going to knead it a bit more by hand.
So tha wants some flour on t'worktop.
I've seen plenty of recipes where they say you can use ready-made filo dough or even puff pastry.
And I've also seen plenty of other ones that say no you can't, you've got to make
it like this because it is so much better. Okay, a little flour on your hands as well.
Well it's sticky but it's smooth. Some recipes say you throw it from shoulder height
onto your worktop. For 15 minutes. Come back later.
[ DOOF ]
Basically this is all about building up gluten so it's nice and strong and won’t
disintegrate when we're making it and baking it. Okay, that's me dough. I'm going to wrap that
in plastic film and set it aside to rest for 30 minutes, possibly more.
While the dough is resting I'm going to make some buttery breadcrumbs.
Now this is possibly optional but basically the idea of it is it goes underneath the apple
filling and it absorbs juices from the apple and stops you getting a soggy bottom, I think.
So I've got 100 grams of breadcrumbs, 50 grams each of unsalted butter and demerara sugar. You
can use ordinary white granulated if you like. And a splash a splish or a splash of vanilla
extract. Let's go over to that pan. We need to melt the butter first of all
then stir in the sugar. Get that dissolved and then stir in the
breadcrumbs and vanilla then remove from the heat and set aside until we need it.
Now we come to the possibly challenging bit which is rolling out the pastry really really thin.
So thin, in fact, that you can read the writing of the cloth through the pastry. And if that happens
well that's when you've done it right apparently. So, clean tea towel and flour on it.
Get your dough - that's quite a lot. I think there might be enough for two sheets there
so I'm going to see what we can do with this half of it and wrap the other bit up again so
it doesn't dry out. Okay, here we go.
Okay we're making some progress - I think I've done about as much as I can with the
rolling pin so now what you need to do is get the backs of your hands under it.
Try not to use your fingers because you'll probably break the pastry.
And you see people twizzling it round like it's pizza dough - I'm not sure I can do that.
Now I've put my thumb through it. Oh no, oh no no no no no no.
Certainly made it bigger. And I can certainly see through it. Now before I attempt to assemble
a strudel I've got to finish off the filling. So I've got 100 grams of demerara sugar.
Mixy mixy. And a sploosh of vanilla.
And you also want to mix in a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
Now after all the effort of getting the sheet of dough as big as you can we come down to
the limitation of what's the biggest thing, biggest baking tray you can get in your oven.
And this is it - I'm going to trim the pastry so it's straight - straight edges
Okay I've got some melted butter which I just want to splatter on the pastry.
Okay breadcrumbs - so I'm making two so I just want to use half of this.
And we just sprinkle it evenly all over except for a margin around the edges. And then apple.
Some people just do the apple in a big heap or a big line and just roll it,
but I'm going to spread it out and then roll it so that we get the pastry in between.
You know, we get layer of pastry and breadcrumbs and then a layer of apple like a Swiss roll.
All right let's see if we can roll it up. You want to
start with the edges, just to close them, stop the filling all spilling out.
Roll it all up try and use the cloth if you can. Oh this is so fragile.
Forgot the raisins didn't I. So there'll be twice as many in the next one!
All right, I’ll pretend that was deliberate - I made one with and one without so
we could compare them.
And now we need to get it onto the paper, and get it onto the tin.
A bit of flour on the paper. Okay, how are we going to do this? I don't know.
Okay sort of like that. We need the seam at the bottom - more butter all over.
Right, here's the second one. I haven't got so much apple but I've got
raisins. So squeeze them out and sprinkle them all over.
And then do the rolling up thing like we did before. And I'll let
you drink that rum if you want!
The raisiny one - and I want to get the
raisiny one on there. I've folded this so it's a bit like a couche cloth you would use if you
were doing a baguette. And basically it's to,
well it's to stop it spreading out flat. I don't know if that will work but we'll try it.
Paint with butter all over. Okay I'm just going to put these raisins on this one so we know it's
the one that's got the raisins in. Okay a little fold there.
I'll put that in the oven for 30 minutes all together,
but every 10 minutes I'm going to take it out and baste it with more butter.
All right that actually took 40 minutes but it's looking good.
Oh yeah. Oh wow. That's the currant indicator.
So that needs to cool down for about 10 minutes then I can slice it and we'll have a taste test.
Right, let's see if we can get this off there onto the cooling rack.
Oh it's broken! No okay, all right, yeah.
And the next one looks like more challenging and it has spread out flat.
There you go, apple strudel. Not as crisp as I wanted but there you go.
And now, it's taste test time with Mrs Keef Cooks.
[ CHEERIN ]
"‘Ello." "Your wish is my command."
"Ooh fab. He wasn't sure about what to cook today. So yeah, how come we were talking about apple"
"strudel the other day?" "'Cos we got apples."
"Ah okay because it just came up and it's one of those things this used to be my absolute"
"favourite thing years and years ago. I couldn't remember anything about it just I loved it."
"Well that worked, mm-hmm. I mean Keef makes an excellent apple pie anyway but this is..."
"it's not as crisp, I think, as I remember." "Yeah, flaky. Yeah it should be crisp."
"Oh and you should have icing sugar on the top but I couldn't be bothered."
"Sorry, it's been a long two days."
"Okay. That's all right."
"What a salesman...it's brilliant make it! Okay thanks for watching and see you next time."
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