Apple Crinkle Cake: Phyllo, Custard & Apples. So Good!!

Hi everyone, yia sas! Welcome to another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. Today we're going to be making an apple crinkle cake. In Greek we call this a pita, which is a pie. Call it a cake, call it a pie. Your house is just going to smell like fall. There's nothing like the aroma of apples, cinnamon, and buttery phyllo baking in the oven. It just smells so comforting and good. Let's get started. Okay, so I'm going to begin by making a homemade caramel sauce. It's very simple to do. So in a saucepan, you want to make sure you're using a deep saucepan because the steam that comes up from this is very dangerous and also sometimes it can bubble up really high, so you don't want to make a mess on your stovetop. Two cups of sugar and a third of a cup of water is going in. This is going to cook for about 15 minutes. It might take longer. The water is going to evaporate and then the sugar is going to appear to crystallize, but don't worry about it at all because once it starts to melt you're going to see it turn into caramel and that's going to take a few more minutes. So keep an eye on it. You can use a spatula to kind of help the crystals break down and the big clumps of sugar break down, but if you leave it alone and just swirl it around, eventually it'll all melt and it'll become a beautiful deep caramel color like this. Turn the heat off and add in six ounces of butter that's been cubed up and then put on an oven mitt so that way the steam doesn't burn your fingers and whisk that together. Next we're going to add one cup of heavy whipping cream and a pinch of salt and you can turn the heat back on and whisk this until everything comes together. All of the lumps melt. There still might be some lumps left over and that's okay. We'll strain them out later on. Once everything is melted and smooth, take it off of the heat and pass it through a strainer into a bowl and I also like to add a teaspoon or two of pure vanilla extract and then that's it. It's ready as it sits. It's going to thicken up and just become a beautiful caramel sauce and it lasts forever in the refrigerator. It keeps fresh for at least a month in the refrigerator. So now we're going to prepare the crinkled cake. I have a pound of phyllo here that's at room temperature. You want to make sure you thaw it out overnight in the refrigerator and then at room temperature for about an hour or two before you use it in its packaging. We won't be using all of the phyllo sheets today unless you're making two of these pies and they're so good. We're going to take one sheet at a time and drizzle some melted butter. This is unsalted butter over it. If the sheets aren't too delicate and aren't ripped like mine are, you can brush them but drizzling the butter is enough and then I like to sprinkle a little bit of granulated sugar on top and just dust it lightly with some cinnamon. Then we're going to scrunch the first layer of phyllo up into an accordion and then I'm going to roll it into a spiral and place it into the center of a 10-inch round pan that I've buttered lightly. Now the best thing to do is to use a springform pan for this because it makes it so much easier to take it out of the pan later on but I'm using my springform pan for another recipe so we're going to have to make it work with this and then I'm going to brush more phyllo layers with butter and do the cinnamon sugar thing and the rest are not going to be rolled up into spirals although you could do that and have like a rosette looking pie at the end of this but I do prefer to wrap them around the first spiral which is it looks like a rose and that takes about 10 to sometimes 13 layers of phyllo. This is exactly how I did it. Then once it's done I like to take an apple and I leave the skin on. I just cut it in half, take out the core and thinly slice it about an eighth of an inch thick. You can take the skin off like I said before or leave it on. I leave it on because it looks prettier like that and then I just like to tuck it in all around the pie just like this and then I take the remaining butter, brush it all over the top of the cake and then pour the remaining butter on top just here and there so that way it's going to cook and become nice and beautifully golden. In the oven it goes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It's going to bake on the center rack for about 40 minutes or until it's nice and golden all around. While it's baking we're going to make the custard. So I'm going to take five eggs that are at room temperature and put them in a pitcher with either half a cup or three quarters of a cup of granulated sugar. I'm just going to do a half cup because we are going to top it with the caramel sauce later on. Whisk that all together and then go in and add one and a half cups of whole milk, half a cup of heavy whipping cream, two teaspoons of pure vanilla extract and a little pinch of salt. If you'd like you can definitely add some orange zest to this. Whisk this all up and after the pie is nice and golden take it out of the oven and pour this custard on top. This is going to go back into the oven at 350 degrees for an additional 25 minutes and then once it comes out of the oven just run a knife around the pan to loosen it up. Let it sit at room temperature until it cools down a little bit and then you can transfer it to your serving platter very carefully. Since I'm not using a springform pan I'm just going to very carefully put a plate on top, invert it and then carefully put it on my cake stand. You can drizzle the caramel sauce on top of the whole pie or serve the caramel sauce on the side and everybody can drizzle as much caramel on their piece as they like. This also tastes delicious with a scoop of ice cream or homemade whipped cream on top or on the side. So just like that the dessert is ready and it's perfect if you want to make something for a weekend, if you have friends coming over or something like that or if you want to make this for the holidays. It's just a simple dessert that everyone is going to love and I love to serve this drizzled with that homemade caramel sauce, maybe a scoop of ice cream or homemade whipped cream but you can serve it just as is with some powdered sugar on top if you want some more cinnamon of course. I used honey crisp apples for this today. I've made this with gala apples or gala apples. I know that lots of people like to use granny smith apples for apple desserts because they bake nicely. I just don't like how tart they are. If you like a tarter apple then go with that one. Let me know which one you're using in the comment section down below but I love to bake with either gala or honey crisp apples. They're probably my two favorites. Leave the skin on or take it off, it's up to you. I know my son came down he saw skin on the apple and he was like I don't like skin on apple desserts but it does look pretty. It just gives it a little bit more color on top when it roasts in the oven but if you don't like it or your family doesn't like it you can peel the apples and that just takes a few more seconds. Like I said before the caramel sauce is more than what you're going to need for this recipe but it keeps well in the fridge for a really long time. We used to make this at the bakery in bigger batches and sometimes if we didn't get to use it right away a few weeks or even sometimes over a month later I found it in there and it was still good. It really it takes a lot for caramel sauce to go bad so you could even freeze it if you'd like but it tastes good on everything. Ice cream, just dunk some apples in there. It's just so good and comforting but and again very easy to make but if you want to skip that step and buy store-bought caramel sauce you can do that too. Time for the taste test. Mmm. So delicious. Personally I love apple desserts and pretty much anything with cinnamon and phyllo. That custard is nice and light. It doesn't at all taste eggy even though there's lots of eggs in there. It's creamy, the phyllo melts in your mouth. It really does taste like a cake. It's not, even though it baked pretty crispy when it first came out of the oven, that custard really softened it up and it does taste more like cake than anything else. Those apples are so nice and the cinnamon of course gives it the perfect little kiss of warmth. About the caramel sauce, I just forgot to say one more thing. So if you're making the caramel sauce at home, when you're cooking the sugar and the water finally like dissolves from there and the sugar starts to melt, the darker the sugar is going to become, it's going to add some bitterness to your caramel sauce. So if you don't want it to be too bitter and you want it to be a little bit milder, don't let it get too much of a mahogany color. That's just one thing that I think that you guys should keep in mind. That's pretty much it. This dessert is so simple to make. I hope you give it a try. If you do, share pictures with me on Instagram. I love to see your recreations. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. You can get the whole website on the blog, simitrasdishes.com. Yes, us.