Lately, I have been looking at easy ways to flatten out biscuit dough (other than a rolling pin) to make fried apple pies and decided to give a tortilla press a try and see how it performs.  There are plenty of large machines available for commercial usage, but I wanted something inexpensive and manually operated.

I looked at ratings for the manual operated tortilla press and the Victoria brand manufactured in Columbia was leading the pack.  Manual tortilla presses are inexpensive, ranging from about 14 to 25 bucks, not including shipping charges.

I ordered the Victoria 8-inch cast iron tortilla press on line and received it in a couple days from a supplier in Florida.

I got a chance to use it yesterday 02-07-20 and this morning and it worked very well.  The thickness of the flattened biscuit was a little thicker than what I prefer, but the end product (fried apple pies) were outstanding!

I will insert a few pixs of the Victoria 8-inch cast iron tortilla press in action before I post pixs of the fried apple pies.

VICTORIA 8-INCH PRESS IN OPERATION

The instructions were to lightly oil the upper and lower platen surfaces and tried that and the biscuit dough did not flatten out or should say, stay flattened out, but started shrinking some reducing the outside diameter of the flattened biscuit dough.

I tried wax paper and it wanted to stick a little to the paper.  I finally cut a plastic food storage bag yielding two squares and it worked out great.  The biscuit dough stayed flattened out and was easy to peel from the plastic.

As evidenced by the above pix, it did an excellent flattening job.  The thin line in the center of the biscuit dough is a plastic storage sleeve I opened the sides and one end to give it a try.  I used a Walmart Great Value flakey biscuit and also experimented with their smaller biscuit which in my humble opinion is too small, yielding a 4.5 inch length fried apple pie.  The larger biscuit yielded a 5.5 inch length fried apple pie, of which I had plenty of apple pie filling inside of it!

FRYING APPLE PIES

It doesn't take those pies very much time to get golden brown in the hot oil and the pies were placed on paper towels to drain any excess cooking oil.

The forward row of fried apple pies are from the smaller biscuit dough and the rear row of fried apple pies are from the larger biscuits and have plenty of apple pie filling inside of them.

The fried apple pie filling was done some time back and frozen in bags that would yield about 10 fried apple pies and only had to thaw the filling out.  I didn't cook the apple pie filling until it was like puree or apple sauce, whereas it had some texture from the apples.

FRIED APPLE PIES READY FOR TESTING

If that fried apple pie doesn't make your taste buds do a little dance, they must be dead.....grin if you must!.

I normally use a 60MM Canon macro lens for food pixs, but used my standard 18-55MM zoom lens which is not as clear and sharp; my bad on this one. 

In summation, the Victoria 8-inch tortilla press worked excellent and as evidenced from the pix, there was no rolling pin or flour used either.  I believe I could modify the rear pin diameter and hole location allowing the press to close a little tighter, but for my needs, it is working fine.  I know some of you are thinking, why not use a thicker plastic or liner, but it would produce a slight wedge shape to the thickness of the biscuit dough from the front to back due to the design of the press being hinged.  There is a gap between the base and the upper moveable platen at the handle hinged area.  You can flip the pressed biscuit dough over and press again, of which will flatten the dough out a little more.

Web published by Bill aka Mickey Porter on 02-08-2020