The pink apple hand pies from the Sibillini Mountains Published from Redazione Best Of The Apps

Soft and golden little cakes filled with pink apple jam from the Sibillini Mountains: an excellence of Marche that hides in short pastry.

How about making the little soft hand pies filled with pink apple jam from the Sibillini Mountains? Excellent for breakfast, perfect as a mid-afternoon snack, these tiny cakes will please everyone in the family. The preparation is really simple. The secret is in the short pastry and in the characteristic taste of the pink apple. This combination is nice and sugary with acidulous notes: perfect for cakes and pies!

Don´t you know what the pink apple is? We’ll explain it to you right away! The pink apple is fruit that grows in certain areas of Marche, between 450 and 900 meters above sea level, in a cool climate like that of the Sibillini. These pinkish apples look small and crushed. Given their unattractive appearance compared to the apples that are on the market, they are rather rare to find. Perhaps also for this reason their cultivation was about to be abandoned until la Comunità Montana dei Sibillini (the Mountain Community of the Sibillini) decided to preserve and protect this variety, even managing to have it recognized by the Slow Food Presidium!

… Now let’s move on to the recipe, here’s what we need:

Ingredients for 5 pink apple hand pies

80 gr  butter

200 gr flour

90 gr white or canne sugar

2 eggs

pinch of salt

1 lemon

Pink apple jam from the Sibillini  Mountains

muffin tin

powdered sugar

Directions

– leave the necessary amount of butter out of the fridge and let it rest at room temperature for 15 minutes.

– In a bowl mix flour, sugar, a pinch of salt and the grated peel of half a lemon.

– add softened butter and eggs to the mixture.

– knead everything with your hands vigorously until you get a compact dough (if it is still too soft, add a bit more flour).

– Wrap the dough in cling film and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

– In the meantime, grease the muffin tin with butter and then cover it with a light layer of flour, so that the dough does not stick.

– Once the dough is ready, take it out of the fridge, divide it into 10 small pieces and roll them out with a rolling pin until you get circles of short pastry that are half a centimetre thick.

– preheat the oven to 180 °C, static oven.

– put 5 little discs of rolled out pie dough in the prepared muffin tin. After making them stick to the bottom, place a couple of tablespoons of filling in the centre of the bottom crust. The filling is the pink apple jam from the Sibillini Mountains.

– Then place the remaining 5 little discs on top. They are the top crust. Crimp the hand pies with a fork to seal them tightly. Make some holes with the fork on the surface to prevent the pies from swelling during cooking.

– Bake for 20 minutes or until they´re golden brown.

– Remove from the oven and allow the hand pies to cool completely … Just before serving, sprinkle them with plenty of powdered sugar!

We know that finding the pink apple jam from the Sibillini Mountains on the market is very difficult! If you do not know where to buy it, you can contact some of our producers who make delicious jams and marmalades from pink apple:

Azienda Agricola Le Spiazzette – Amandola

Azienda Agricola Sigi – Macerata

Azienda Agricola La Golosa – Montelparo

You can also buy it directly here.

Happy baking and … let us know how it went!