Flaky...

...is a pretty good description of how I've been feeling lately about way too many things.  I looked around my bathroom this morning and all I could think was, when am I going to find to clean up here?  There just aren't enough hours in the day.  Plus I'm stressing out a lot about trying to get Brianna and Gillian to bed earlier.  It's just so hard, since on the nights I work late I don't get home until about 7:45, and on the other days we're lucky to be home by 7:00.  *sigh*  Any of you moms out there have any suggestions?

I knew I didn't want to miss another Tuesdays with Dorie, so I was committed to making the apple turnovers picked for us by Julie of Someone's in the Kitchen.  I love pastry.  That wonderful browned butter flavor you get is addictive.  Much as I love chocolate, pastry is my real weakness.  Croissants, danish, palmiers, all-butter pie crust, you name it.  And as I've discovered how rewarding it is to make it all myself, I can't see going back to the store-bought stuff.  It's just not as good.  Thankfully, some of it, like this week's recipe, really isn't that hard to make.  After reviewing the recipe, I did decide to stick with half a batch of dough, since I really don't need more temptation than that...

As Dorie often recommends, I started mixing the dough by hand, rubbing butter into the dry ingredients. I deliberately left some fairly big bits of butter, knowing that it would add to the flakiness of the dough when I rolled it out.  Once I was done working the butter in, I added the sour cream and ended up with a fairly soft dough.  Into the fridge it went to chill overnight.  That was Sunday.  It was Monday night before I got back to it.  I rolled the dough out and gave it a turn as Dorie indicates in the recipe.  Since the dough was still pretty cold, I actually decided to do a second turn as well before putting the dough back in the fridge to chill again.  It was late, so I didn't actually get to the turnovers themselves until Tuesday morning.

I had just enough time before work Tuesday morning to roll out half the dough.  I ended up cutting it into 9 small squares (about 3 1/2 inches on a side) and making some mini triangular turnovers.  I think of triangles when I think of turnovers, not the rounded shapes that are indicated in the recipe.  Plus then I was able to use pretty much all of the dough.  I used one Granny Smith apple for the filling and eyeballed the corresponding amounts of sugar, flour and cinnamon.  After filling and sealing the dough, I brushed the tops with a bit of water (didn't want to mess with egg wash) and sprinkled them with some turbinado sugar.  I baked the turnovers for about 22 minutes, let them cool slightly, and took them to work with me.

I tacked the rest of the dough Tuesday night after instead of dinner.  I made slightly bigger turnovers with that portion of dough, ending up with 6 turnovers from squares that were about 4 1/2 inches on a side.  When they were done baking, I plated one with a scoop of Caramel Apple Spice ice cream that I made over the weekend (you can now find the recipe here), drizzled it with some more caramel sauce and dug in.  As Tracey said, it has fruit, so that makes it healthy enough to eat for dinner, right? =)

The verdict?  These turnovers were fabulous.  The crust was nice and flaky.  Unlike some of the other apple things I've made recently, the filling was well cooked and tasty.  The minis fared well at work; I think the guys were surprised that I made them myself from scratch.  Gillian really seemed to like the "apple pie" she ate for breakfast this morning.  Brianna thought it was okay, too, but I think she would have preferred more filling.  Jamie thought the dough worked quite well--sturdy enough to hold up to a bit of handling, but tender and flaky once you bite into it.  I ate them plain, with the ice cream, then plain again for breakfast this morning.  All I can say is, yum.  Oh, and it's a good thing I only made the half-batch.  Though I'm pretty sure it won't be long before I make them again.

Head over to Julie's blog for the recipe.  And be sure to check out the other TWD bakers to see what everyone else did with this week's recipe.