Apple Crumble

I’m pretty crazed for apple pie, but pie crusts always defeat me. They turn out very tasty, for sure, but they always look… deformed. I’m being kind; really, I am. I just cannot seem to get pie crust to look pretty. And it is very important to me that my desserts look as pretty as I can make them. I usually don’t hit my goal posts in this regard, but I always keep trying. 🙂

This apple crumble recipe from Cook’s Illustrated piqued my interest. I thought I might be able to adapt this to something akin to a Dutch apple pie without the bottom crust. I ended up making quite a few changes to the original recipe. This turned out exactly as I’d hoped: a filling to rival that of the best apple pie, and a crumb topping that is both firm and tender, not to mention buttery!

I thought the baking times given by Cook’s Illustrated would yield some still-tough apples. I increased the baking time for the apples, baking them at 325°F for a while and then increasing the temperature to 350°F before finishing them at 375°F. The apples emerged soft, tender, juicy, and flavourful. To get the filling even more pie-like, I added some butter and brown sugar to the apples and increased the amount of cinnamon; I also added some cornstarch to get the filling to thicken. The finished filling tastes far better than the premade canned apple pie filling you buy at the store, and I’m proud to finally be able to say I created something that does this.

The crumb topping contains almonds. I was highly skeptical about including them, but I did so anyway, and I’m glad I did! I did change how the almonds were incorporated into the crumb topping by making sure they were completely ground up in the food processor, rather than leaving them in chunks as directed in the original recipe. The texture of the crumb topping is very rich, almost meaty, if you will, and I think this is due to the almonds. They impart a very faint nutty flavour to the crumb topping that gives the overall dessert more complexity and, oddly, makes it more satisfying. (This might also be due to the extra butter I added to the crumb topping. 😉 )

I thought this was unintentionally adorable and hilarious: One of my butterscotch rivulets formed a little heart on its own. I swear I didn’t engineer this; it just happened. Serendipity, I say: Just in time for Valentine’s Day. 🙂

Apple Crumble

Yield: One 8×8″ dish

Ingredients:

Filling:
1 generous TBS cornstarch
1 TBS + generous splash of lemon juice
generous sprinkle cinnamon (about 1 tsp.)
2/3 c. granulated sugar
pinch Kosher salt
6 Braeburn or similar apples (3 lbs. total), peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes
about 2 tsp. light brown sugar
2 TBS unsalted butter, cut into about 12 – 16 pieces

Topping:
5 oz. (1 c.) all-purpose flour
1.75 oz. (1/4 c.) granulated sugar, plus 1 TBS for sprinkling on top
1.75 oz. (1/4 c.) light brown sugar
pinch Kosher salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract, optional (pretty sure I didn’t use any)
1/2 cup whole roasted, lightly salted almonds
1 stick unsalted butter, divided

Method:
Preheat oven to 325°F.

Topping:
Process flour, sugars, and salt. Add vanilla, if using, and pulse until combined. Add almonds and process until finely chopped. Add 6 TBS butter & process until butter is in pea-sized pieces. Turn mixture out onto baking sheet lined with Silpat or parchment paper and knead with heel of hand, as with puff pastry, until mixture clumps into large, crumbly balls. Spread mixture into even layer (there will be some small, sand-like bits along with mostly large crumbs about 1/2″ to 1″ in size). Set aside.

Filling:
Combine cornstarch, lemon juice, cinnamon, granulated sugar, and salt in large bowl. Stir to combine. Add apples and toss to coat; mixture will thicken. Pour into 8×8″ glass baking dish and smooth top. Sprinkle brown sugar over filling. Dot pieces of butter evenly across top of filling. Cover dish tightly with aluminum foil.

Bake both topping and filling at 325°F for 15 minutes. Remove crumb mixture (it should be lightly browned and firm; if not, bake for a few more minutes) and set aside on wire rack to cool completely. Increase heat to 350°; remove apples only briefly to stir, then bake them at 350°F for 15 minutes. Remove apples briefly to stir; increase heat to 375°F and bake apples for another 15 minutes. Remove aluminum foil and bake at 375°F, uncovered, for about 12 additional minutes, or until apples are starting to bubble in dish and are tender when poked with a fork.

Reduce oven heat to 350°F. Meanwhile, scatter crumb topping evenly over apples. Sprinkle 1 TBS white sugar over topping and bake about 20 minutes, or until tips of crumb topping (but not the entirety of each crumb) is golden brown and fruit is bubbling around edges. Cool 15 minutes on wire rack; serve with ice cream, whipped cream, and / or butterscotch (or caramel) sauce.

Source: Heavily adapted from Cook’s Illustrated (paid content)

Gordon Ramsay’s Cranberry-Apple Sauce

Note: I apologize for the lack of photographs in this post. They’ll appear sooner or later! I kept forgetting to take pictures, what with all the holiday madness running rampant. I hate it when cookbooks don’t have pictures of food, but trust me, it’s worth trying this even without any photographs to look at!

Cranberries are divisive, don’t you think? People rarely have a “meh” attitude toward them; it’s either love or hate in cranberry town. I always liked cranberry juice, and could even stomach a slice or two of canned cranberry sauce. (Gosh, that’s just so wrong! Anything with ‘sauce’ in the title should not slice, period. Correct me if I’m wrong in the comments.) So I was firmly on “Team Cranberry.”

I’m now Team Cranberry’s head cheerleader, or quarterback, or whatever sports metaphor means leading a group of people toward a goal pursued with fiery passion. For I have, rather late in life relatively speaking, discovered homemade cranberry sauce. And not just any sauce; Gordon Ramsay’s cranberry sauce, as cooked on his Christmas special (published on YouTube in December of 2012). I’m sure that his personal life is… interesting, to say the least, given the multiple accusations of extramarital affairs and the highly publicised split with his father-in-law that dog him to this day. A friend of the family has even stated publicly that at this point, Gordon’s marriage works best when he and his wife, Tana, see one another only rarely. I think all the juicy gossip about him makes him all the more interesting. But the most interesting thing about him is that he makes cooking look effortless, and he has inspired my husband and me to push our limits in the kitchen.

I digress; this post is about his fabulous cranberry sauce, not about his salacious personal life. Gordon adds star anise, cardamom, and black pepper as seasonings to this sauce, and this would definitely give the sauce a far-eastern flair. I actually hate star anise and hold lukewarm feelings, at best, toward cardamom, so I left those ingredients out but kept the black pepper and added cinnamon sticks (removed after the cooking process is complete) to impart a subtle but notable cinnamon flavour. As Gordon’s cranberry sauce contains diced Braeburn apples, the cinnamon works to marry the apple and cranberry flavours together. Although I’m not sure they really needed cinnamon as their relationship counselor; they work together marvellously well as it is. I suppose one can never have too much harmony, eh? 😉 The black pepper sounds weird but works beautifully; you cannot taste black pepper per se, but the sauce develops the faintest hint of a spicy kick with this addition. Fresh orange juice and orange zest elevate this dish to something I would expect at a high-end restaurant; a garnish with duck breast, perhaps, or with savory chicken. It truly is amazing.

I have adapted the recipe even beyond the changes described above. Gordon caramelizes sugar before adding the cranberries, but I found, through trial and error, that it is far too easy to burn the bottom layer of sugar before the top layer even starts to caramelize, so I combine the cranberries and sugar and then cook them together. The moisture from the cranberries helps keep the sugar from caramelizing unevenly, and is handy at preventing the sugar from burning. Gordon uses ruby port to deglaze the pan, but as I did not have any on hand at the time, I used a blend of pomegranate juice and sweet Riesling (specifically, Pacific Rim 2016). You can use any liquid you wish to deglaze the pan: Good options for this recipe include the aforementioned pomegranate juice, Riesling or white wine, apple juice, cranberry juice, red wine, even water. To boost the complexity of flavours, I threw in a teaspoon of vanilla extract, which added a lovely warmth of flavour. I added a cornstarch slurry at the end of cooking to ensure the sauce would set up nice and thick.

This sauce keeps for up to a week in the refrigerator. The flavours meld and become even more complex the longer it sits. Serve at room temperature.

Gordon Ramsay’s Cranberry-Apple Sauce

Yield: About 4 cups

Ingredients:

1 3/4 c. white sugar
350 g. fresh cranberries
4 cinnamon sticks
pinch or 2 of ground ginger
generous pinch of Kosher salt
3 Braeburn or similar apples, peeled and diced
approx. 140 mL (there is some leeway here; you can add a tad more or less liquid as you see fit) of deglazing liquid
1 orange (zest + a gentle squeezing of the juice)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 TBS. cornstarch, mixed with the orange juice you didn’t add to the pot + a bit of the         deglazing liquid (I used some of the Riesling along with the orange juice)
generous pinch of black pepper

Method:

Combine sugar, cranberries, cinnamon, ginger, and salt in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sugar is dissolved; cranberries will start to soften at this point. Add apples and cook, stirring frequently, until apples have softened somewhat, about 5 – 10 minutes. Add deglazing liquid, orange zest, and approximately half of the orange’s juice, reserving the other half for the cornstarch slurry; add vanilla extract. Simmer until apples are at desired softness. This takes between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on how soft you want the apples to be. Ten minutes will leave a slight crunch in the apples; 20 minutes will leave the apples about as soft as the cranberries. I prefer softer apples.

In a small bowl, mix cornstarch with the remaining orange juice and some of the deglazing liquid. Add slurry to cranberry sauce and cook, stirring often, until mixture thickens noticeably, about 3 – 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in black pepper. Allow to cool completely at room temperature. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 1 week.

Source: Adapted from Gordon Ramsay (see this YouTube video, starting at 7:50)

Gordon Ramsay’s Banana Ice Cream

A silver hammock, upon which the banana ice cream delicately rests.

This is the banana ice cream I’ve been meaning to blog about for nearly three years. I saw it in Gordon Ramsay’s book Just Desserts (2001), and Hubbles and I had to try it. It’s phenomenal. We’ve made it a dozen times now; it’s a household favourite. The texture is perfection, and the banana flavour is… well, very banana-esque. Commercial banana ice creams now taste like chemicals, because this one has spoiled us for life.

It’s a swirling maelstrom of silky banana-ness. Lingerie has nothing on this texture.

We tried it with a vanilla bean once, and that was the best ice cream either of us have ever had, before or since. You can omit the vanilla, and it will be closer to Gordon’s recipe, but I think the addition of vanilla really boosts the banana flavour, besides adding a delicate flavour of its own. I would like to try this at some point with a full dozen yolks, because yolks add silkiness to the texture. They make a rich ice cream even richer.

It looks like the banana ice cream is rising from its silky-creamy maelstrom (see caption above), and maybe it is. I’m really not here to judge.

I normally add a lot of commentary to recipes, but I am going to let this one speak for itself. It’s one of my favourite recipes for any type of food. Period. There’s nothing quite so refreshing on a hot summer day as ice cream made with fresh fruit.

Gordon Ramsay’s Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients:

4 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar, divided
1 TBS vanilla extract OR 2 vanilla beans
9 egg yolks
4 – 6 overripe bananas

Method:

Place cream, half the sugar, and vanilla (if using beans, slit them and scrape seeds into cream mixture; place beans in the mixture as well) in 5 quart saucepan. Peel bananas and add them to the cream mixture, mashing them with a potato masher until they are disintegrated. Heat on medium heat until simmering, stirring occasionally. It’s okay if the mixture boils, but simmering is ideal.

Meanwhile, place yolks and the remaining sugar in a medium bowl. Whisk until thoroughly combined and smooth, around 5 minutes.

Once cream mixture has reached a simmer, let it simmer for five to seven minutes. (You might be preparing the egg yolks at this point in time.) Strain mixture into a medium bowl, but do not try and get every last bit of the liquid out of the strainer. If you do this, the mixture will taste slightly bitter. If you get 90% of the liquid out, that will suffice. Discard the banana solids, or eat them separately. If you like, you can leave them in the ice cream (thus negating the need for straining), but I think they contribute a slight bitterness.

Slowly stream the hot banana mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking the yolks like mad the entire time. This is called tempering the egg yolks, and it is important you add the hot liquid slowly so that the yolks don’t cook into solids. Set aside.

Clean the 5 quart pot and transfer the yolk-banana mixture into the pot. Cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens slightly (the “froth” on the liquid’s surface will thicken noticeably, making it more difficult to see the liquid itself).

Transfer to a medium bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 3 hours or up to 3 days. Churn in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions. Eat within 5 days of making.

Source: Adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s Just Desserts (2001)