Chef Joost
Appelbeignets (Dutch Apple Fritters)
A winter apple ring in light batter, fried for oudejaarsavond, New Year's Eve, when the oliebol makes the noise and the quieter beignet keeps the cinnamon-sugared secret.
Culinary Explorer
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Appelflappen
Created by
The New Year's apple pocket of the Dutch kitchen: crisp puff pastry, cinnamon, raisins, and sugar crystals, folded shut before midnight and eaten while the old year clears its throat.
Pastries & Cookies
Dutch
New Years
Holiday
Make Ahead
20 min
Active Time
22 min cook•42 min total
Yield10 appelflappen
The last thing many Dutch kitchens bake before the year turns is not grand. It is a square of bladerdeeg, laminated puff pastry, folded over apple and cinnamon into a triangle that looks like it learned geometry from a hungry child. This is proper. Appelflappen belong to Oudejaarsavond, New Year's Eve, where they sit beside oliebollen with less noise and often better manners.
The name already tells you the whole trick. Appel is apple. Flap is the fold, the loose little word for a pastry turned over on itself. No mystery dragged in by the ankles. But let me tell you a secret: the modesty is the point. Dutch festive baking often hides its extravagance in plain clothes, and here the treasure is spice cargo made household: cinnamon in the apple, sugar on the crust, butter between the pastry layers doing the work without making speeches.
What matters is restraint. Cut the apple small so it softens before the pastry overbakes, use a tart apple because sugar needs an argument, and seal the triangle well enough that the juices stay mostly inside. Mostly. A little syrup at the edge is not failure, it's evidence. Hou het altijd simpel, always keep it simple: good puff pastry, firm apple, cinnamon, a hot oven, and a table where the first crumbs fall before midnight.
Dutch New Year baking has older roots than the modern appelflap: seventeenth-century cookbooks such as De verstandige kock record oliekoecken, the ancestors of oliebollen, as festive fried dough. Apple pastries and apple fritters circulated through Dutch kitchens for centuries, but the familiar triangular appelflap became a practical home standard in the twentieth century as ready-made bladerdeeg, puff pastry, became widely available. Its place beside oliebollen on Oudejaarsavond shows a very Dutch pattern: one fried thing, one baked thing, both built from winter storage fruit, sugar, and spice.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
frozen puff pastry (bladerdeeg)
Quantity
10 squares
thawed but still cold
firm tart apples
Quantity
3
peeled and diced small
raisins
Quantity
50g
granulated sugar
Quantity
50g
ground cinnamon
Quantity
1 1/2 teaspoons
lemon juice
Quantity
1 teaspoon
plain breadcrumbs or finely crushed rusk
Quantity
1 tablespoon
egg
Quantity
1
beaten
coarse sugar or pearl sugar
Quantity
3 tablespoons
for topping
flour
Quantity
as needed
for dusting
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| frozen puff pastry (bladerdeeg)thawed but still cold | 10 squares |
| firm tart applespeeled and diced small | 3 |
| raisins | 50g |
| granulated sugar | 50g |
| ground cinnamon | 1 1/2 teaspoons |
| lemon juice | 1 teaspoon |
| plain breadcrumbs or finely crushed rusk | 1 tablespoon |
| eggbeaten | 1 |
| coarse sugar or pearl sugarfor topping | 3 tablespoons |
| flourfor dusting | as needed |
Equipment Needed
- •Large baking tray
- •Parchment paper
- •Fork for sealing
- •Pastry brush
Instructions
- 1
Heat the oven
Heat the oven to 200C and line a large baking tray with parchment. Keep the puff pastry cold while you work. Warm pastry slumps before it rises, and bladerdeeg needs the shock of heat to lift into those clean buttery layers.
- 2
Mix the filling
Put the diced apple, raisins, granulated sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, and breadcrumbs into a bowl and stir until the apple is evenly coated. The breadcrumbs are not there to announce themselves; they catch the apple juices so the bottom of the pastry stays crisp instead of turning into sweet wallpaper paste.
- 3
Fill the squares
Lay the pastry squares on a lightly floured surface. Spoon a modest mound of apple filling onto one half of each square, leaving a clear border around the edges. Be stern with yourself here. Too much filling makes a handsome triangle on the table and a leaking apology in the oven.
If the pastry starts to feel soft or greasy, put the squares back in the refrigerator for ten minutes before folding. Cold pastry is not fussiness; it is structure. - 4
Fold and seal
Brush the edges lightly with beaten egg, fold each square into a triangle, and press the edges closed with a fork. Cut one small slit in the top of each appelflap so the apple can breathe. Without that little escape route, the filling will find its own, and it has no respect for your baking tray.
- 5
Glaze and sugar
Move the triangles to the prepared tray. Brush the tops with beaten egg and scatter them generously with coarse sugar. The sugar should stay visible after baking, little pale crystals against the golden pastry, because an appelflap without that crunch has forgotten its New Year's clothes.
- 6
Bake until golden
Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until the pastry is high, deeply golden at the corners, and crisp enough that it flakes when you lift one from the tray. Let them cool for at least ten minutes before eating. The apple inside holds heat like a secret, and it will burn the impatient with scholarly precision.
Chef Tips
- •Use tart, firm apples: Elstar is very Dutch and very good here, Goudreinet is excellent in season, and Granny Smith behaves well when the others are absent.
- •Do not overfill. The proper appelflap is a pastry pocket with apple inside, not apple stew wearing a hat.
- •Bake from cold. If you shape them ahead, chill the tray before baking so the pastry rises cleanly and the butter stays where it should.
- •Eat them the day they are baked. They can be refreshed briefly in a hot oven the next day, but the sugar crust is at its best within a few hours.
Advance Preparation
- •Shape the appelflappen up to 8 hours ahead, cover loosely, and refrigerate. Brush with egg and add coarse sugar just before baking.
- •The apple filling can be mixed 2 hours ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator, though longer storage draws out too much juice.
- •Baked appelflappen keep 1 day at room temperature; rewarm in a 180C oven for 6 to 8 minutes to restore the pastry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 100g)
Calories
275 calories
Total Fat
14 g
Saturated Fat
7 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
6 g
Cholesterol
20 mg
Sodium
190 mg
Total Carbohydrates
34 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
18 g
Protein
4 g
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