Caramelised Apples in Coffee Syrup

Apples are probably my favourite dessert ingredients because they are so easy and versatile, and as legend goes, helps keep the doctor away. Plus apples are easily available all year round.

Besides the elusive French apple tart and our specialty apple crumble, we also like to cooked diced apples with cinnamon over low fire. The warm soft apples with some raisins added goes extremely well vanilla ice-cream. It's not necessary to add sugar or butter when cooking the apples, as some recipes suggested.

I've been wanting to try this caramelised apples recipe I got in my Chocolate and Coffee Bible cookbook published by Hermes House. Although it was Rémi who made it in the end, I'm still satisfied and already looking forward to trying it again.

Caramelised Apples with Coffee Syrup
Proportion based on 2 apples, one apple per serving.

2 eating apples, peeled but left whole
Approx. 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted (don't have to be precise, just need enough butter to coat around the apples
Approx. 30g sugar
sprinkle of ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons strong brewed coffee

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cut a thin slice off the base of the apple to make them stable if necessary.

Using a pastry brush, coat each apple with the melted butter. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a shallow dish, and roll the apple in the dish to coat it all over with the sugar mixture.

Arrange the apples on a shallow baking dish that just fit, so that they can stand upright. Pour the coffee into the dish and sprinkle the remaining sugar mixture over the apples.

Bake for 40 minutes. In between, brush the coffee over the apples two or three times during the baking. During the last basting, pour out the juices into a small pan, but continue keeping the apples in the oven.

Boil the juices rapidly until it reduces to a thick syrup. Pour over the apples and bake for about 10 more minutes or until the apples are tender. Serve hot with a spoon of cream or ice-cream.

Super Sinful Kouign Amann

There are some foods where just by eating one serving will fulfill your monthly quota of calories intake. Duck confit is one of them. Kouign Amann is the dessert equivalent of duck confit, except that instead of the letting the duck drumstick swim in duck fat, you drown the cake dough in a sea of butter and sugar. Don't be deceived by the harmless looking crust of the picture I took.

Kouign-amann (pronounced ku-nya-marn) is a celtic specialty from Brittany. The name comes from the Breton words for cake ("kouign") and butter ("amann"). It's quite like bread (think croissant), made by folding bread dough several times so that you achieve a multilayer cake/bread. Like croissant, it is oily, as you have to spread 10 times more butter on it than on kaya toast (assuming you use 1 tablespoon butter for kaya toast). It is more sinful than croissant, in the sense that after pouring 10 big tablespoons of butter, you dump yet another 10 big tablespoons of sugar onto it.

The result is a bread-like crusty cake that has a deceptively light but oily layered texture, with crispy sugar that caramelise in between the layers.

Thankfully, we shared our sin with M (who decided to work doubly hard at the gym for the week after the dessert).

Rémi did everything, I just provided eye power. No recipe sharing here since I have no idea how he did it, except that he took the recipe proportions from Camille's cookbook, and followed the steps from the following video clip.

Apricot Clafoutis

Nothing new, but here's a variation of Clafoutis that I did last week.

I did the same thing twice, first with just half an apricot. There was too much crust and not enough fruits, so I tried by putting more than one apricot, all diced up, into each muffin round.

Making individual servings of clafoutis is useful for bringing them out on, say a picnic, no messiness with cutting the cake up.

I wish spring and summer to come soon. Right now, everyday fruits is always apples, pears, kiwis and oranges. I'm already looking forward to cherries, peaches, apricots and all kinds of berries.