These are the fastest Instant Pot apple turnovers you’ll ever eat. They come together in half an hour, from apples to filling to baking the puff pastry. Want a quick alternative to an apple pie this holiday season? You’ll definitely want to give these a shot.
These apple turnovers are my alternative to my mom’s traditional Thanksgiving apple pie. She has a very specific technique: ratios of different kinds of apples, a particular apple layering method, and the secret sauce of seasonings that make for the perfect apple pie. This is…not what that is. This is your lazy man’s “apple pie,” but it is by no means any less delicious. With a few quick tricks, an electric pressure cooker, and frozen puff pastry, you can have these turnovers in hand in under half an hour.
Planning a socially distant outdoor, Thanksgiving picnic for a very small group of people? Make these! It will be far less mess than hauling a pie to your local park and provide everybody with the warm, autumnal flavors that they know and love.
Making Apple Turnovers In The Instant Pot
This recipe could not be simpler! All you need is:
- Frozen puff pastry
- Water
- White cane sugar
- Molasses
- Cinnamon
- Apple pie spice
- Salt
- Corn Starch
- Apples (of course!), sliced thin (but not too thin)
First things first, you will want to pull out your frozen puff pastry (Pepperidge Farm brand is readily available at most grocery stores and is accidentally vegan!) and let the container thaw on the counter for thirty to forty minutes. While it’s softening, pull out your Instant Pot and get ready to set and forget your filling.
(Side note: I could write an ode to my Instant Pot and all of its many uses, but there are about ten thousand of these already in existence.)
Are you ready for the incredibly complicated instructions for this recipe? Here we go.
I don’t know if you’ll be able to handle it.
Take all of the ingredients except the puff pastry and cornstarch and put it all into the instant pot. Stir, pop on the lid (make sure the vent is set to ‘sealing’), and set to 0 minutes at high pressure. That’s it. I’m serious! The mixture cooks while the pot is coming to pressure, so once it reaches pressure, you do not need to cook it anymore. Release the pressure immediately.
Breathe in the aroma, but don’t stick your face in the stream of hot steam that is shooting into your kitchen. That would be painful and I cannot be held responsible for you being unable to control your nose. Sorry.
From here, we only have one more step to complete the filling: we need to thicken it. We do this by using the cornstarch from our ingredients list to create a slurry. A slurry is a mixture of a small amount of liquid and starch, which is then added to a larger amount of hot liquid for thickening purposes. In the case of our turnover filling, we will remove some of the liquid from the Instant Pot, whisk it with the cornstarch in a small dish, and then place it back into the pot with the rest of the filling. This will thick our turnover filling and transform it from a mere liquid into the luscious apple pie filling we know and love.
Now, we prep our puff pastry. Cut each sheet into four squares. A package of puff pastry typically includes two sheets, so you will wind up with eight squares total.
Once the filling has had a few minutes to cool down, spoon a dollop onto one side of each square, making sure you leave room around said dollop so you can seal up your turnovers.
Now we close ’em up. Wet the edges of the puff pastry, either with some water or nondairy milk. You can either use your finger or a pastry brush (my singular pastry brush recently met its demise in the garbage disposal, so I used my fingers), but get those edges nice and damp; it will help make sure the turnovers have a nice seal. Fold over the puff pastry on the diagonal, from corner to corner.
Crimp the edges with a fork to further tighten the seal. You’ll notice in the picture above that some of the filling leaked out a little before I even popped them in the oven. That is completely fine! No matter what, they will still be tasty.
Bake for 25 minutes in a 400 degree oven.
These are best served warm, but they by no means have to be eaten straight from the oven (though, how could you not want to? Look at them!). I’ll put some in a Tupperware and warm them up each morning for breakfast.
If you’re getting ready for Thanksgiving, go crazy and pair them with a little bit of my cranberry sauce. Or really go off the rails and put some of the cranberry sauce in the turnovers before baking! You’re welcome.
Instant Pot Apple Turnovers
Equipment
- Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker
- Large baking sheet
Ingredients
- 4 medium apples, honeycrisp preferred sliced thin (approx. 8-10 slices per apple)
- 230 grams water
- 170 grams white cane sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoons apple pie spice
- ⅛ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2 sheets frozen puff pastry defrosted for 30 minutes
Instructions
- While the puff pastry is defrosting, prepare your turnover filling. Combine apples, water, sugar, apple pie spice, and salt in the interior pot of an electric pressure cooker and stir to combine.
- Set the pressure cooker to cook for ZERO minutes at high pressure, making sure the valve is set to 'sealing.' When the pot comes to pressure, do a quick pressure release.
- After the filling has had a couple of minutes to cool, remove ½ cup of the filling liquid and transfer to a separate bowl. Mix the cornstarch into this reserved liquid and when it is fully combined, put the liquid back into the instant pot, stirring all of the filling until this thicker liquid is fully combined.
- Preheat the oven to 400°.
- Cut the puff pastry into four squares per sheet (you will have 8 squares altogether) and lay them on a parchment (or silicone) lined baking sheet.
- Place a dollop of filling in each square, slightly off-center. This will allow you to fold the pastry over the filling and not have it leak out the edges too much.
- Wet the edges of the puff pastry with either water or nondairy milk and then fold the puff pastry over on the diagonal, using a fork to crimp the edges of the turnovers.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the puff pastry becomes golden brown.
- Serve warm!
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