Description
Beautifully textured flaky sweet phyllo pastry with apples, walnuts and cinnamon. This vegan apple burek can be served as breakfast, a dessert or afternoon tea. Great both warm or cold.
Ingredients
- 16 sheets phyllo pastry sheets*
- 600g / 1.32 pounds apples,* (around 4 medium-sized)
- ½ cup / 50g walnuts, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons coconut sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
- Neutral oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (390 degrees Fahrenheit).
- Using a pastry brush, brush the inside of your baking dish, including the sides.
- Core the apples and grate them. You can do this by hand or in your food processor. It’s much quicker to put them through the food processor.
- Add the apples to a bowl and add in the walnuts, coconut sugar, cinnamon and vanilla. Stir well.
- Add some oil to a cup or bowl and get it ready with your pastry brush for brushing over the phyllo sheets.
- Remove the phyllo pastry from the package and lay it out flat on your working bench.
- Oil your first sheet of pastry and lay it on your pre-oiled baking dish. Oil the second sheet, adding it to cover the other side of the baking dish. They should be overlapping in the middle but covering the edges of the baking dish.
- Take a handful of the apple mixture and sprinkle it across the bottom of the baking dish.
- Next, brush another sheet of pastry with oil. Just a thin layer of it will be enough. You also don’t have to cover the whole sheet, around 80% will be fine. Slightly scrunch up the phyllo sheet and add it to one corner of the baking dish, covering the apple mix below. Repeat this process until you have four sheets of phyllo covering the single layer of apple mix. I do one in each corner. (See video for clarification.)
- Continue adding a layer of the apple mix, followed by four sheets of scrunched and oiled pastry. This should be four layers of apples and three layers of scrunched and oiled phyllo sheets.
- There should be some phyllo hanging off the sides of the baking dish. Place them over the top of the filling.
- You should have two phyllo sheets left. Brush each of the remaining sheets of pastry and fold them in half, nicely covering the top of the burek with the phyllo.
- Place in the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes. If you notice that it’s golden on top sooner, cover it with foil and return back to bake.
- Remove from oven and let it rest for around 30 minutes to an hour before cutting.
- This dish can be served warm or cold.
Notes
Phyllo pastry: The phyllo pastry that I use is a 375g / 13.23-ounce packet. After I make the burek, I have 5 sheets of pastry left.
Apples: I used Royal Gala (Australian variety). See tips for more information about which apples to use.
You can find the full-length video of this recipe over on our YouTube channel.
- Diet: Vegan
