The braided puff pastry with apples is an easy and quick apple dessert, very indulgent and as delicious as Apple fritters or Whole apple cake. This dessert is inspired by the apple strudel, but it is simpler both in the filling and in the base made with puff pastry, so it’s a practical dessert, perfect even for less experienced cooks. In a little over half an hour you can bring to the table your apple braid with puff pastry, ready to be enjoyed warm, lukewarm, or at room temperature. The braided finish also makes this dessert refined and elegant and allows you to make a great impression with very little effort! I enriched my puff pastry apple braid with cinnamon and pine nuts, but you can replace them with sliced almonds or other dried fruit and enrich it with pieces of dark chocolate or raisins. Serve this cake warm accompanied by a portion of pastry cream or vanilla ice cream and it will be spectacular, but this dessert can also be enjoyed cold and is even great the next day. Let’s go to the kitchen now, but before discovering our puff pastry and apple recipe, I invite you to take a look at my special dedicated to Apple desserts: all the recipes and remember that if you want to stay updated on all my recipes, you can follow my Facebook page (here) and my Instagram profile (here).

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Difficulty: Very easy
Cost: Very inexpensive
Preparation time: 15 Minutes
Portions: 5
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients to make the puff pastry apple braid

1 roll puff pastry (trimmed to a rectangle)
2 apples
50 3 1/2 tbsp (about 1.8 oz) jam
3 cookies (dry, or use breadcrumbs)
to taste ground cinnamon
to taste lemon zest (organic)
to taste lemon juice
1 tablespoon brown sugar
20 about 3/4 oz pine nuts (or sliced almonds)
1 egg (beaten, for glazing)
to taste powdered sugar

Tools

Oven
Baking sheet
Bowl

Preparation

To make the puff pastry braid with apples and jam, choose sweet and fragrant apples; peel and slice them (in the photos you see 4 apples because I made a double batch).
Place them in a bowl, drizzle with lemon juice and sprinkle with the grated zest of the same lemon, brown sugar, and cinnamon, then mix.
Unroll the puff pastry, make diagonal cuts along the long sides about 3/8 inch apart, forming strips about 4 inches long. Spread the orange jam (I prefer it because it is more aromatic) only in the center of the pastry.
Add a few pine nuts. Arrange the apple slices over the jam and sprinkle with the crumbled cookies so that they can absorb the excess moisture.
Fold the strips of pastry from the edges toward the center, alternating one side then the other and overlapping them to form a two-ended braid. Brush with beaten egg, decorate with pine nuts or sliced almonds, and bake in a conventional oven at 392°F for 20–25 minutes or until the desired golden color is reached. Remove from the oven, dust with powdered sugar, and enjoy.