Apple Berry Pockets

‘Hand Pie’ is the trendy name for them, and they the flavour of the month at the moment, and with good reason.

But, since we are far from trendy, we call them ‘pockets’ in this house. Just like we do with every other folded over food, like pizza pockets.

But these apple berry pockets are small, and sticky, and sweet and delicious!

Apple Berry Pocket Recipe

Pastry

Don’t be put off by the idea of making pastry from scratch. It’s not as hard as it seems and it really is so melt in your mouth delicious! I followed Simply Recipes instructions for ‘perfect pie crust‘ and modified their recipe only very slightly.

2.5 cups of plain flour
225gms of very cold butter, cut into cubes
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp castor sugar
6 to 8 tbsp ice water

Put your cubed butter in the freezer for a while just like they say because apparently the trick to making your own flaky and delicious pastry is not to let the butter combine with the flour and water. So all the ingredients need to be cold so that the butter doesn’t melt and combine too much.

So add your flour, salt and sugar to the food processor with the regular blade in, and give it a quick whiz to mix it all together. Then pop in your super cold butter and whiz it just until the butter and flour mix looks like big crumbs. Then add your icy water one table spoon at a time. You don’t want to add too much water (that makes your pastry tough apparently), so just enough until when you squeeze a bit between your fingers it sticks together in a rough ball.

Dump your mix out onto a lightly floured surfaces and gently squash it together to form a ball. It is very crummy, don’t be alarmed! Just as gently and quickly as you can, make it into two ball shapes, wrap them and wack them in the fridge for at least an hour.

Filling

Of course you can fill these with anything at all, but we had some cooked apples in the freezer and the last of our strawberry conserve (kind of like runny jam with big lumps of strawberries in it…mmmmm). Mixed together the apple and strawberries tasted divine all on their own… but I swear I only ate one spoonfull. Oh, ok, maybe three.

Putting It Together

Pre-heat your oven to around 180 C and grab one of your pastry balls out of the fridge and let it get to room temp for a few minutes while you find your rolling pin and a suitable sized circular object.

On a lightly floured surface roll out your pastry quite thinly and cut out your circles.

Then it is simply a matter of spooning a little mixture onto the pastry circles, folding them over and crimping the open edge with a fork. Use a little water to get the edges to stick together if needed.

A word of warning… do not overfill your pockets! I always fall victim to the temptation to cram in as much yumminess as possible and it is never a good thing as you can see by my leaking pockets…

Pop your pockets on a well greased tray and if you want to get fancy you can brush with egg white and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown.