Air Fryer Apple Turnovers With Homemade Pastry

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These air fryer apple turnovers are like little individual apple pies, made with flaky rough puff pastry and a juicy apple pie filling.

Turnovers are little hand pies, made with a filling placed on pastry and then folded over and sealed. These use apples but you can have all sorts of fruits or berries in turnovers, and they make a delicious dessert or breakfast treat. These apple turnovers are made in the air fryer instead of a conventional oven, which cooks them nice and fast!

You can use grocery store puff pastry sheets for an extra easy air fryer dessert (like with these blueberry hand pies). Or, make your own. Homemade rough puff pastry isn’t hard to make and tastes delicious.

Puff pastry

You can use a sheet of store-bought flaky puff pastry to make these air fryer turnovers extra fast. However, if you’ve got some time on your hands you can make your own pie crust with rough puff pastry! These air fryer apple turnovers are using a rough puff pastry recipe.

It tastes delicious thanks to the copious amounts of butter in the dough. The dough is rolled and folded multiple times which creates layers. As it is baked, the water in the butter evaporates and pushes these layers up.

The trick to keeping it flaky is to have the butter cold. That way the hot air from the air fryer can quickly evaporate the water. If the butter melts into the pastry while you’re rolling it, you won’t get the layers of dough.

This recipe uses a rough puff pastry dough, where chunks of butter are mixed into the dough and rolled out into many layers. There’s a little resting time, but not as much as traditional puff pastry.

This recipe makes enough puff pastry for 6 turnovers. This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled to make extra puff pastry which can be frozen for when you want it for future desserts or meals.

The apples

The sweet apple filling is soft cinnamon apples, made from fresh apples that are cooked down with a little butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Cook them over low to medium heat until they are softened, around 10-15 minutes.

The filling needs to be cooled down completely before adding to the puff pastry.

Step-by-step instructions

Find the ingredients needed and the printable recipe card at the bottom of this post.

Begin by chopping the butter into 1inch cubes and placing them in the freezer for 5 minutes to ensure it’s nice and cold.

To a large bowl add the flour, sugar, and salt and mix them together. Add the cold cubes of butter to the flour.

Use a pastry cutter to roughly cut the butter into the flour, but not too small. A few very small cubes are fine but the rest can be left in fairly large chunks. If the butter is melting at any point, place the bowl in the refrigerator.

Pour the lemon juice or vinegar over the dough and add the ice-cold water. Drizzle it in slowly, a tablespoon of water at a time. Use a spatula or your hands to combine it into a shaggy dough and add in enough water as needed but not too much. Add any extra water in slowly, a tablespoon at a time.

It should hold together easily when pressed but not be sticky. If the dough is super crumbly, add a bit more water. You don’t want it sticky though. Form the dough into a mound and let it chill in the fridge for 10 minutes. If your room temperature is very cold, you can begin rolling right away.

Laminating

On a floured work surface, roll the dough with a rolling pin into roughly a 5x10inch rectangle. You will see large chunks of butter in the dough. Dust off any excess flour from the top of the dough.

Fold the bottom third of the dough up to the middle, then fold the top third of the dough over top to make a pamphlet shape. That was Fold 1.

Turn the dough a quarter turn and roll it back out into a rectangle and repeat the folding.

Repeat this process 4 more times so you do 6 folds in total. You can trim the edges of the dough to neaten them when folding to make the lamination more even. This isn’t vital though.

After the last fold, wrap the dough up tightly in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours or up to 24 (or freeze it for up to 3 months.)

Filling

While the pastry is chilling, make the filling because this needs to be cooled down completely before being used. 

In a large skillet over low-medium heat, gently cook the diced apples, vanilla, brown sugar, and cinnamon in butter. Cook the apples for around 8-10 minutes until the apple, is soft.

Add the apples to a small bowl and let them cool down completely.

Shaping

Remove the dough from the fridge and place it on a lightly floured work surface. Roll it into a 12×15-inch rectangle. Cut the dough into 6 rectangles. A pizza cutter is very helpful for this.

Add a heaped tablespoon of filling onto the middle of each rectangle leaving a ½-inch border around the sides. Brush a little border of water along the edges of the pastry, then fold over the other half into a triangle.

Use a fork to crimp down the edges to seal them. They need to be well sealed or they will burst open in the air fryer. Brush the tops of the turnovers with egg wash and use a sharp knife to cut two little slits in the tops of each turnover.

Air frying

Preheat the air fryer for 2 minutes at 400℉/204°C.

Lay 3-4 turnovers in the bottom of the air fryer basket in a single layer. You can line the basket with parchment paper if you like or spray it with cooking spray but it’s not a necessity. They will be cooked in batches. The other turnovers can be stored in the fridge until ready to bake.

Bake the turnovers at 375℉/190°C for 12 minutes until deep golden brown. Place the baked turnovers on a cooling rack while the remaining turnovers are baked.

Serving and storing

For a dessert, serve these turnovers with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream and a dusting of powdered sugar. You can also enjoy this delicious treat as breakfast!

Leftover baked turnovers can be stored in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 3 months. The turnovers can be reheated in the air fryer at 375℉/190°C for 3-4 minutes.

Unbaked turnovers can be wrapped and frozen in a freezer bag for up to 3 months and baked in the air fryer from frozen, they may need an extra minute of baking time.

Other flavor ideas

Next time, make strawberry turnovers, blueberry, or cherry turnovers! They make such an easy dessert that’s very versatile when it comes to fillings.