Apple Galette with Gingerbread

With a curd cheese pie crust

One can never have enough recipes with apples and even more so, when certain recipes bring back sweet, old childhood memories. I love to think back to the days when my grandmother got her apple galette out of the oven, when the scent of cinnamon and baked apples filled the house and when I couldn’t wait for her to finally cut me a large piece.

My grandmother knew a lot of apple recipes. After all, she had to turn all those apples that grew in our garden into delicious lunches and desserts. During those cold days in winter she would make her wonderful apple strudel, fry apples covered in a sweet pastry, serve them with spatzle and she knew some different ways to bake an apple pie. I cherished one particular recipe of her apple pies because the crust tasted so soft and yet also crunchy. It was only much later that I discovered the secret behind it. She used curd cheese in her crust. Quite clever, isn’t it! Unfortunately, my mum and I never found her recipe. But I did some experiments in my kitchen and I believe that granny would have been delighted with my results.

For today’s version I added some crumbled gingerbread to the recipe. Mr BlueberryBasket is the reason why I did this. As soon as it starts getting colder he develops this incredible yearning for gingerbread. Of course, I cannot watch him suffer and so I combined his longings with my desires. The result is this apple galette with gingerbread.

Another one of my granny’s apple recipes is her apple-almond-tart.

Apple Galette with Gingerbread

with a curd cheese pie crust

Makes 2 large galettes:
500 g (4 cups and 1 tablespoon) all purpose flour
100 g (1/2 cup) sugar
200 g (3/4 – 1 cup) butter
250 g (1 cup) curd cheese or cream cheese
1 egg
some salt

1,5 kg (2,3 lb) apples
1 lemon
100 g (1/4 lb) gingerbread
4 tablespoons orange marmalade
some cinnamon
about 6 tablespoons sugar (depending on the sweetness of the apples)

1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon milk

sour cream, clotted cream, crème fraiche or mascarpone for serving

Preheat the oven to 160°C / 320°F fan.

Combine flour, sugar, salt in a bowl. Tip the cubed butter into the bowl. Rub the butter and the flour between your fingers until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg and curd cheese/cream cheese and quickly bring the ingredients together with your hands to form a dough. Shortly knead the crust on a floured surface then leave to rest in the fridge for about half an hour.

Peel the apples and cut them into very thin slices. Combine with the lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and marmalade.

Crumble the gingerbread and divide into 4 portions.

Roll out half the crust on a sheet of baking parchment (oval shaped) and transfer onto a baking sheet (with the baking parchment). Spread 1 quarter of the gingerbread in the middle (lengthwise) and put half of the apples on top. Leave a 2-inch (4-5 cm) border of unfilled crust. Fold this border over your filling. Whisk the egg yolk and milk together and brush the crust. Sprinkle some gingerbread crumbs on the apples.

Do exactly the same with the second half of the crust and apple filling. However, you can also store the crust in the fridge for a few days or even freeze it. In this case, you’ll only need half of the filling in the first place.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 45-50 minutes.

Serve warm or cold with a dollop of cream/sour cream/mascarpone/clotted cream.

You can print the recipe here: