Lenja Pita

While simplistic in it's approach and choice of ingredients, the serbian "Lazymans pie" interpretation of apple pie delivers an awesomely well rounded experience.

Created on 2019-02-17

Source: Simon's mom

Estimated time needed: At least 56 minutes. At most 82 minutes.

Ingredients

1000 g apples About 8 apples
300 g flour
280 g butter Some people swear to using unsalted butter for this recipe, personally I like using salted butter for the flavor enhancing effect of the salt.
200 g egg About 4 medium sized eggs of 50g each
175 g sugar About 2 tablespoons
4 g vanilla powder Optional, about one teaspoon
3.5 g cinnamon Optional, about one teaspoon

Scaling

Percent %
By ingredient

Timeline

Directions

⌛ Active time 5 minutes

  • 1000 g apples | About 8 apples

Peel and cut apples:

The apples will go into the filling. If you want a more chunky filling, cut them up roughly. If you want a really smooth apple filling, consider shredding the apples.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

  • 25 g sugar | About 2 tablespoons
  • 4 g vanilla powder | Optional, about one teaspoon
  • 3.5 g cinnamon | Optional, about one teaspoon

Put apples in frying pan and season them

⌛ Active time 7 minutes

  • 15 g butter

Fry the apples:

This has two purposes. Firstly it will draw out water from the apples, so that the dough around the apples doesn't become soggy. Secondly, depending on how finely you chopped the apples, they will become very soft, perhaps almost a smooth mass. It also helps the sugar and spices draw a bit better in. Depending on your frying pan you might need some fat to make this go smoother, in which case I recoment using some butter. One tbsp of butter is about 15 g.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes | Passive time 1 minutes

  • 250 g butter | Some people swear to using unsalted butter for this recipe, personally I like using salted butter for the flavor enhancing effect of the salt.

Soften butter:

Soften the butter so that you can easily mix it with the egg yolks and sugar. Make sure that it is not too hot when you add it, or you will be eating cake with chunks of boiled egg.

⌛ Active time 3 minutes

  • 200 g egg | About 4 medium sized eggs of 50g each

Split eggs:

Save the eggwhites for later, and put the egg yolks in a larger bowl you will use for mixing the rest of the ingredients

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

  • 150 g sugar

Add sugar:

Add sugar to the egg yolks and mix it in

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

Add the softened butter:

Add the softened butter to the sugar/egg yolk mixture

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

  • 300 g flour

Add flour:

Mix in flour until you have a smooth dough

⌛ Active time 3 minutes

Beat eggwhites:

Beat the eggwhites as good as you can, preferrably until they are stiff (usually not achievable if you are not using a machine for the beating). This step is important, because most of the fluffyness in the resulting cake will come from the air trapped in the eggwhites in this step.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes

Fold in the eggwhites:

Carefully fold the eggwhites into the dought. Remember that the more air you squeeze out at this step, the less fluffy the resulting cake becomes.

⌛ Active time 1 minutes | Passive time 10 minutes

Pre-heat the oven:

To about 150 ℃

⌛ Active time 3 minutes

  • 15 g butter

Butter cake pan:

You can also use neutral cooking oil, but I prefer the taste of butter. 15 g of butter is about 1 tbsp. A pan of about 2.5L should be a good size. Deeper pans will make the assembly easier.

⌛ Active time 3 minutes

Assemble the cake:

Put about two thirds of the dough in the bottom of th cake pan. Cover it completely with the apple filling. Place the last third of the dough on top so that it agan covers the whole of the cake.

⌛ Passive time 40 minutes

Bake the cake:

For about 40 minutes. If you want, you can turn up the heat a bit for the last 5 - 10 minutes.