Welcome to The Virtual Food & Wine Festival. In honor of Epcot's International Food & Wine Festival a few Disney bloggers have gathered together their special culinary talents and prepared a virtual F&W Festival!
You're all invited to visit each blog and virtually eat your way around the World Showcase! Please visit all of our blogs and leave comments on our dishes.
My MIL always made the best strudel and she encouraged me to try making it myself. Her recipe included making the dough from scratch, which was way beyond my abilities. Well, very sadly my MIL passed away a year ago. In her memory and my husband's prodding, I decided to give Apple Strudel a try. It also helped that I found a fabulous recipe in The Cooking With Mickey Volume II from Caffe Villa Verde in the Disneyland Hotel using filo dough.
Apple Strudel with Filo Dough
Yield: 1 strudel
Preheat oven to 400º
Ingredients:
1 pound apples, thinly sliced
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
5 sheets filo dough
1/2 cup butter, melted
Whipped cream or custard sauce
*optional ingredients:
1/4 cup raisins or cranberries
1/2 teaspoon Apple Pie Spice
Peel and core fresh apples. Cut each into wedges, then into thin slices.
Place another sheet of dough on top and repeat, until all five have been layered with butter.
Keep filo dough under a moist kitchen towel after the package is opened and while working.
Place apple mixture on upper third of filo dough layers.
Sprinkle with remaining cinnamon and sugar mixture and roll dough, using the kitchen towel to lift the dough as tightly as possible around the apples.
Place rolled dough, seam side down on a buttered baking sheet and brush with remaining butter. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon and sugar on the top of the roll.
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Serve hot with whipped cream or custard sauce.
~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~
~~~~~~
Kitchen Notes: Using cranberries was too tart. Raisins would have been better. A baking mat or parchment paper was essential, as cleaning up the caramelized sugar would have been awful if not impossible. This recipe made two strudels. If the filo leaves were wider it might make one strudel but may have been more difficult to roll. I used my Mickey kitchen towel with a waffle texture. Next time I'll use a pastry cloth to roll the dough. It would absorb less and might give me a tighter, better-looking roll.
The strudel was a huge hit in my house and I'm so glad I finally tried it. I even made another one after this as a special birthday request. DS gave me the ultimate compliment when he said,
It tasted like it was fresh from Grandma's kitchen.
Now it's time to continue virtually eating your way around ºoº World Showcase. Bon Appetit!
