Fried Apple-Pie

There's a McD joint near our house where we can just conveniently drive-thru and place our orders and voila, your dinner. Despite the fast-food campaign huh! Anyway, among all, my kids love McD Apple-Pie. The pastry is rightly between soft and crispy and the filling is just righly sweet and sour. Sold at RM2.90 each and if you add one more, they are 2 for RM3.00! Tambah seposen aje tu. If they can sell it at RM1.50 each, imagine how much they mark-up the price!

Anyway, seeing Kakak and Iman munching their pies dengan gamak sekali, it prompted me to try my own. Furthermore, it's fried and not baked. We still haven't bought an oven yet so whatever experiment needs to exclude one with oven. After googling, I found a few recipes on the net.

Naturally, I did the filling first. It reminded me of the good-old-days when Iman was just a baby. His favorite food was applesauce and the apple pie filling recipe is exactly like applesauce. Only with sugar and it is not blended down into saucy-consistency.

FRIED APPLE-PIE
FILLING
Ingredients
1. Green apples - 3-4 apples, peeled, cored and diced.
2. Sugar - 1/2 to 3/4 cup.
3. Good dash of cinnamon powder.
4. A bit of water

Step-by-Step
- Put apples in a pan and add just a little water. You may not want the filling to be watery as this will 'soak' the pastry.
- Add sugar and cinnamon powder.
- Bring to a boil over high heat and then reduced to low flame. Let to simmer for 10-15 minutes until the apples are a bit soft.
- With a fork, mash some parts of the apples while leaving some part solid. So will have a nice combination of 'saucy' and cruchy apples.
- Let to cool.

The next day, I did the pastry and eventually the pie. It was such a tough task. It's hard to get even simple things done when I have many assistants. Kakak insisted to help so she got her portion of pastry that she rolled, knead and whatever until it turned blackish. Iman, who was already sleepy while I was rolling the dough thin, insisted that he needed to sleep right between my legs. So there was I, with all the 'assistance' I needed!

PASTRY
Ingredients
1. 2 cups of multi-purpose flour (I used the usual tepung cap-sauh).
2. 1/2 cup of shortening/butter (I used shortening and I used 3/4 cup of it).
3. 1 tsp salt
4. 1/2-3/4 cup water

Step-by-Step
- Mix flour with salt. Then 'ayak' (apa omputih cakap ayak ek?).
- Rub shortening with your fingers. (of course the mixture got a bit lumpy)
- Add water and knead into dough (the original recipe said 'use a fork' but I prefer to do with my hands)
- Roll the dough into desired size.
- Lay the filling and fold the pastry.
- Use a bit of water to 'glue' the pastry.

Since it was getting late and Kakak got overly excited with the kneading and rolling and Iman was trying his best to fit and snug himself between my legs, I decided to abort the last operation - frying. Maka jadilah 'frozen food'. Malam semalam baru goreng 2 ketul. (I got 6 pies. Had I not throw away some ingredients, I may have gotten 8. Errr... they are all of many shapes and sizes).

Anyway, a few additional information
1. Shortening
2. Rub method

before & after