This past week, I made McDonald’s-Style Apple Turnovers. I knew that I wanted to bake something, pie-related, but didn’t know what. As I was looking through Stella Parks’ BraveTart for some ideas/inspo, a roommate pointed out “McDonald’s apple turnovers” written offhandedly on a page out of curiosity. I never considered that as something to make but between that and potentially making a full apple pie, the turnovers didn’t seem too bad of an idea. Apple pie happens to be one of my favorite things to eat too. With the recipe from her book, I decided to make these turnovers.

So what sets McDonald’s apple turnovers apart from your average apple turnover? I dunno; I think I’ve only eaten McDonald’s apple turnovers once in my life. However, something that Stella noted was that these turnovers used freeze-dried apples in their filling. As fruits often hold quite a bit of water, the typical way of removing this water was by taking the time to cook the fruit down. McDonald’s found a way around this by using freeze-dried apple powder to soak up an extra liquid, thereby absorbing whatever extra liquid there would have been and preserving the integrity of the crust as well as keeping the apple-y taste.

I made the crust first. There wasn’t too much drama making the crust, especially after making so many other pie related things in the past. After making a shaggy dough, I rolled it out to a roughly 11 x 13″ rectangle, and cut out four 4″-by-5″ rectangles. The recipe actually called for 5″-by-6″ rectangles but the recipe still seemed to work with it. I had enough scraps to make one more 4″-by-5″ rectangle. I let it chill in the fridge overnight.

The next day, it was time to prepare the filling. After a quick blitz of a package of freeze dried apples, sugar, and cinnamon, I had a nice batch of apple-cinnamon-y powder. The most time-consuming step was predictably cutting up the apples. Because they were going into a turnover, I had to make them fit by cutting them into small pieces. After peeling and coring two Granny Smith apples, I slice them down the core, cut out the core, and quartered them before slicing them and dicing them into tiny 1/4″ pieces. After tossing it in the apple-cinnamon powder, along with melted butter, brown sugar ( as a substitute for molasses), and lemon juice, I had my apple filling.

Next, it was time to fill the turnovers. I put roughly 1.5 tbsp of filling on one side of the rectangles, and sealed it up by folding over each turnover in half like a book and crimping it shut with a fork. I did not want to overfill it, lest it burst during baking and makes a big leaky mess. I then let the turnovers chill until firm for the next 45 minutes.

After the chill period, I sprinkled a generous helping of cinnamon sugar on each turnover and cut some decorative slits to make it look like the classic turnover. I then baked them at 400F, closer to 25 minutes than 30 minutes, due to the sugar burning.

After baking and letting it cool, I was able to eat it. The cinnamon sugar gave each turnover a nice warm brown looking color. To my surprise, none of the turnovers exploded and I didn’t see any of them leak any filling. The crust was more of the star of the show. It was perfectly flaky and satisfying to eat. In hindsight, I could have stuffed more apple filling, not too much, but it was definitely possible. I like that the filling wasn’t too sweet and a pretty nice mixture of apple and cinnamon.

Out of curiosity, I did have some leftover filling and dough and made a rudimentary looking hand pie to see what would happen if I tried to overstuff it. I also skipped the sprinkling step and the chilling step and put an egg wash on it instead. I baked it for the same period of time. Predictably, either because it was overstuffed or maybe not as well sealed or firm upon baking, the pie bursted open and pie filling leaked out on the parchment paper below. While it didn’t look as nice as the other turnovers, it was still pretty good.

This would make a great breakfast treat. I don’t know if I would make this regularly but this was a pretty good apple turnover recipe.