Easy Apple Strudel!

My friend Nick at Home Brew Brewery loves to brew his own beer.  In celebration of Oktoberfest he brewed a special batch and threw a party! I brought some delicious (and super easy) Apple Strudel. I started with this recipe from All Recipes. Because the recipe only called for brown sugar to be mixed with the apples... I spiced it up a bit!

Ingredients:
2 - 3 Granny Smith apples
1 Cup brown sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons cinnamon
2 1/4 Teaspoons nutmeg
1/4 Teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 Sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 Egg
1/4 Cup milk

Tools Needed:
The Usual
Whisk
Baking Sheet
Baking Brush
Foil

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Peel, core and slice up the apples and place them in a large bowl. I did what I like to call the "homemade peel" ...aka the lazy persons peel. I love the taste of apple peels and it's the healthiest part so I don't really see a reason to peel off all of the apple peel.

Stir the brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cayenne pepper into the apples.

 Place puff pastry flat on the baking sheet and arrange apple filling down the middle of the pastry lengthwise. You may not be able to fit all of the apple filling into the pastry. 

Fold the pastry lengthwise around the mixture. Seal edges of pastry by using a bit of water on your fingers, and rubbing the pastry edges together. Whisk egg and milk together, and brush onto top of pastry. Cut several slits into the pastry.

Bake in oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Here is a slice of the strudel with some of Nicks Oktoberfest home brew. I got a million compliments on the strudel at Nicks party. It is super easy and you will definitely enjoy it!

New York!

So I think my blog is going to start heading in a new direction! As much as I love to bake... I LOVE FOOD MORE! If eating constantly didn't make me fat, I would... no joke. 


In saying that let me kind of layout how the rest of my posts are more or less going to go. From this point forward blog post subjects will be... 

• Baking, Eating, Sharing
• Cooking, Eating, Sharing
• Eating and Sharing (by "Eating" I mean anything I eat that I deem to be good enough to write a blog about... I will write a blog about)

Alright! So last weekend I went to New York with my friend Jglav to visit my friend Kat. Kat is an assistant stylist to the style editor of the Today Show (cool job huh!?) and writes an awesome fashion blog at StellarPutTogethers.wordpress.com. Kat let Jglav and I stay at her place in Jersey City and spent the entire weekend showing us around. I took pictures of EVERY SINGLE THING I ate in New York!

Jglav and I arrived late Friday night and Kat immediately took us to Time square. Of course I got a street vendor hot dog! In my opinion it is not a trip to New York if you don't!

My dog came with everything (except for relish... I'm not a sweet pickle fan). 

The next morning we all walked from Kat's apartment to a local bagel shop call Wonder Bagels. I was blown away by the oj choices... no pulp, some pulp, apple and even orange peach mango! YUM!

Best bagels I have ever eaten... no joke!! I got the everything bagel with plain cream cheese and Kat got an everything bagel with egg whites, cheese and tomatoes. 

This is me... in bagel heaven. 

We could not resist some Dunkin Donuts! I had an iced coffee and the pumpkin harvest donut. Jglav had the sugar donut. 

After several hours of shopping and touring we took a rest for some Pinkberry ! I had chocolate yogurt with bananas, strawberries, mini chocolate chips and almond slivers. 

Starbucks iced coffee and shoes... need I say more?

Mmmmm... take home pad thai, pad co, hummus and carrots! I was too tired to pay attention to the name of the local joint we ordered this from.

A long Saturday night of bar hopping and dancing ended with this fabulous pepperoni, canadian bacon and pineapple pizza slice from Famous Original Ray's Pizza. 

Another Wonder Bagel breakfast... this time I had an everything bagel with egg whites, cheese, tomatoes and avocado (we added the avocado ourselves). 

Did you know that coconut water is a great hang over cure?! Everyone drinks it in New York and it worked for me... read about its effects here!

Yep... why just try one donut when you can sample a variety!

After another long day touring we stopped at a sushi joint called Sushiya. Kat and I split the grilled salmon roll. It had grilled salmon, avocado, MANGO and red pepper. Fabulous! 

Street vendor crepe of strawberries, bananas and (of course) Nutella!

More Starbucks iced coffee... obviously sleep was not a high priority on this trip. 

And on the last day we had Wonder Bagels again (at this point we were addicted). I ventured out and got green chive cream cheese (as if an everything bagel didn't make my breath bad enough!).

Over all I had an absolutely wonderful time... we did so much shopping (H&M, Urban Outfitters, Top Shop) and I got to see my favorite painting, Starry Night, at MOMA.  I cannot wait to return... possibly this summer! A BIG THANKS goes out to Kat for being a wonderful hostess! Love ya twin!