Apple turnovers

These were made and shown earlier, vacuum packed and frozen, merely baked today.

That whole time in raw dough and thin frozen butter sheet form.

An area is cleared in the freezer to accommodate a baking tray.  Butter is melted, about 1 and 1/2 stick, to pour onto a plastic-wrapped baking sheet to 2/3 its area and then frozen flatly. The result is a flat sheet of butter 2/3 the size of the baking sheet.

Ordinary pie crust dough, except made with much less butter, is rolled out to fit the full area of baking pan. 

The sheet of butter is placed on top of the dough almost to its edges except for one 1/3 length of dough. The unbuttered portion of dough is folded over to cover half the buttered side. The buttered edge is folded on top resulting in a stack of three dough layers separated by two thin layers of butter. The pile is rolled to fit the baking pan and frozen again.

Not completely frozen, just chilled. The butter must stay hard and separate from the dough (that has its own butter in it).

The folded dough is rolled out again to fit the freezer pan, chilled again. This process is repeated a few times. The freezer speeds things up considerably. This process is called lamination. 

This was breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

When you bite off of a corner, as I did nine times today, that is two layers of dough at once with no apple filling, the baked flakes separate in your mouth when crushed in there and when wetted they swell apart from each other and puff dryly in your mouth even as they absorb your saliva and even as they disintegrate further to dust inside your mouth. A drink is necessary to erase the whole thing and do it again. It's fascinating.

And the whole time I was thinking my neighbor joking about his girlfriend not knowing how to bake Hot Pockets.

And what extraordinary Hot Pockets these would be. 

Except I do not know what a Hot Pocket is. I am only imagining and going by Google Images. I'm thinking, a  thick beef stew inside this dough, frozen this way for fast access. Whatever Hot Pockets are, I am certain that my version would beat them. Imagine them filled with bœuf bourguignon.

The coffee is one cup of extremely strong espresso, a dark roast with extra water and extra seconds steeping so that it turns black, pressed through, then the remaining three cups of plain water that was preheated for just short of a full quart of regular coffee a bit dark.

With a full jigger of (mint) Baley's Irish Cream, and milk, and sugar, and a tablespoon Ovaltine added.

Shown above is half of that, prepared in a quart jar and poured into a pint jar. And it is delicious. Perfect for this sort of thing.