Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  (Okay, today’s Black Friday, but I generally view Black Friday as an unpleasant period of time in which all my friends who work retail are overworked and it’s not wise to venture into a store.  So I choose to hold onto the joy of Thanksgiving instead.)  Thanks to Jocelyn for covering for me a few weeks ago, and here I am returning the favor since she’s traveling to visit relatives and I’m at home.

I’ll keep the preamble short and sweet today:  Once I made crescent rolls, Ginny immediately suggested I could make turnovers.  So I did.  And they are delicious.  🙂  You can see the cherry and especially the blueberry filling just oozing out of those triangles in the picture.  It takes time and attention to make these come out neatly, but it’s worth it.  Let the instructions commence!

Fruit-Filled Turnovers

Yield:  12-16 turnovers, depending on how big you make them!  I usually make half the dough at a time.

Ingredients:

for the dough:

  • 2 1/2 tsp yeast
  • 1 1/2 tsp sugar
  • 2/3 cup hot water
  • 3 T butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 T oil
  • 1 3/4 cup dough mix, plus extra for dusting
  • 2 tsp xanthan gum
  • 3/4 tsp guar gum
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp vanilla
  • about 2 T melted butter for brushing

for the filling — I just use canned pie filling!  🙂  But whatever you want to use, more power to you.

for the topping:

  • 1/2 oz cream cheese, softened
  • 2 tsp butter, melted
  • scant 1/4 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 cup powdered sugar
  • enough milk for a spreadable consistency

Directions:

1.  First, make the dough.  (And, if you’re going to bake some or all of the dough right away, preheat the oven to 375 for a metal pan, 400 for a glass pan.)   As with crescent roll dough, you’ll make the dough in three stages:  First, combine the yeast, 1 1/2 tsp sugar, and hot water, and set that mixture aside to proof.  Second, in the bowl of your stand mixer, use the paddle attachment to combine the softened butter, sugar, egg, oil, and 1/2 cup sugar.  Third, add the remaining ingredients to the stand mixer (except the melted butter), then add the proofed yeast mixture, then blend it all together until smooth.

2.  Now you can roll out the dough.  (If you’re only going to use half the dough right now, just wrap the other half in plastic wrap and tuck it in the fridge.)  For whatever reason every time I make these I always screw up the first one or two turnovers; I don’t know why!  But then I remember what I’m doing and the rest come out fine.  🙂

Lay out a square of wax paper, grease it lightly, then dust it with dough mix.  Cut off a piece of dough that’s about the right fraction for one turnover — an eighth of the dough ball if you’re making eight turnovers, a sixth if you’re making six, and so on — but err on the large side.  With a rolling pin also dusted with dough mix, roll the dough piece out into roughly a square.  (Make sure you don’t roll it so thin you can’t then fold it over without the dough breaking; I often pick up the dough and flip it over a few times as it gets thinner to test this before I use any filling.)  If you want, use a knife to cut the dough into a more exact square so you’ll get a really nice triangle shape in a second.  (Knead the scraps back into the rest of the dough for the next piece!)

3.  Time to add the filling.  Take 1-2 T of pie filling (or whatever it is you’re using for filling) and plop it carefully in the center of the square, without letting any of it near the edges.  Then take one corner of the square and fold it over to the opposite corner, and firmly press and pinch the edges of the newly formed triangle together.  You want enough filling that the turnover will be nice and full, but not so much that it won’t close.  Don’t worry if the first few are a mess, you’ll get the hang of it quickly.

4.  Arrange the turnovers in a greased pan, then brush them generously with melted butter and pop them in a preheated oven to bake for 14-16 minutes.  (Remember, 400 degrees for a glass pan, 375 for a metal pan.)  They’ll come open a bit as they bake usually, but that’s okay.

5.  While the turnovers are in the oven, whip up some cream cheese topping for them:  Using the whisk attachment of your stand mixer, just cream together everything but the milk — that is, the softened cream cheese, melted butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar.  Then slowly add a little milk at a time until the resulting mixture is just thin enough to spreadable, however much that takes.  As soon as you take the turnovers out of the oven, spread the topping over them, and they’re ready to serve!