Hard work, awesome taste :9

This Sunday I tried out a recipe of an American apple pie, based on a video, Frank showed us in class. Even though I’m not a little bit talented in baking, it worked out quite well. It nearly took me half a day to accomplish this mission. I started in the early morning, while my parents were having breakfast and finished when they were taking over the kitchen for preparing dinner.

Let me show you how it works:

First of all there are two separate lists of ingredients. One for the crust and one for the filling

è For the crust you’ll need:

-          500 g flour

-          360 g butter

-          65 g sugar

-          2 tsp salt

-          150 ml cold water

èThe filling:

-          6 apples, peeled and cut into cubes

-          65 g sugar

-          65 g brown sugar

-          ½ tsp cinnamon powder

-          1 tsp lemon juice

-          1 tbsp flour

-          50 g melted butter

-          1 egg beaten with 2 tbsp cream

The video gives a clear description of how to do it the correct way. Here I’m going to list the steps approximately.

1.      Take your mixer by the hand and put all crust ingredients in it except the cold water. While mixing add the water in moderate amounts until the dough is formed to a unique mass.

2.       Form the dough into a ball and cut off a third of it. One piece will be for the crust, the other smaller one for the topping. Flatten both pieces, wrap them up with cling film and place it in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Afterwards roll the larger dough ball with your rolling pin. You can already preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll the dough until it is flat enough to get into the pie pan. The shell has to chill for another 20 minutes.

3.       Now you can start to make the filling. Blend the apple cubes with brown sugar, white sugar, lemon juice and the melted butter. Then fill the pie pan with the mixture. Even now it looks moreish.

4.       The remaining dough hast to be cut into 8 long stripes which you have to place across the top of the filling. To make it look like more creative, you can weave them together. You better cut off the overhanging excess. Brush the edge of the crust and the stripes with the whisked egg wash.

5.       The last thing you have to do is to put it in the oven and let it bake for 60 minutes or so.

In the end it should look like this:

Who am I?

Imagine the following situation: A couple of friends sitting in someone’s living room, watching the soccer World Cup finals. Mario Götze scores the decisive goal, so Germany is world champion. But there’s only one guy in the group, who’s happy with the result. In fact it’s me, Justus, a 20-year old guy.

My full name is Justus Johannes Antonius, which may assume that I’m not a hundred percent pure-blooded Austrian. My father is originally from Germany, born in a little village named Glandorf which is located near Münster. From an early age I used to spend a lot of time there. My grandparents speak a specific mixture of German and Dutch, in plain terms Plattdeutsch. Therefore I know some Dutch phrases. However, I was born and raised in Austria. Well these few facts could be a legitimation for being fond of the German national team and of course the country itself.

My second and even bigger passion is doing cycling trips with my best friend Erik. We have known each other for... well let’s say more than 20 years. We proudly can boast ourselves with 4 trips. Year by year we managed to increase our track length about 125 miles per trip. Certainly we camp in the wild, otherwise the thrill would be gone. The most recent one brought us to the Atlantic coast of France. It took us 11 days to master 815 miles. As you can imagine, we were not always as patient and companionable as expected. I’m the kind of person, who has to keep moving forward and has to get her daily amount of miles. If we miss an important junction, it’s of course Erik’s fault because he’s our “map-guy”. From his point of view it’s the reverse way, which is simply ridiculous. All in all we usually have a good time. Besides my love for cycling, I also do a lot of other sports in my leisure time such as athletics, playing soccer etc.

When it’s time to escape the everyday stress, I just lie down in my bed, pick my earphones (and my phone) and listen to audiobooks. They get me out of reality and take me somewhere far, far away.     I generally enjoy listening to Steven King novels. When it’s late at night and you can’t get any sleep, don’t worry, Mr. King keeps you awake.

So, I think that’s quite enough. For further information, feel free to ask. Moin!