Apple Cockaigne on Halloween

BOO!

Did I scare you?

So, I really wanted to use Halloween as an occasion to make apple desserts .. I’m seeing an apple cake with open-faced layers of apple slices. And so I flipped through a bunch of recipes and thought I’d give apple cockaigne a try. Why is it called cockaigne? The only clue we’re given is that the word means an imaginary land of luxurious and idle living .. mmm, like an apple paradise. That’s somewhere I can sail away to, with or without the broomstick.

Oh yes, that’s my makeshift hat for my Willy Wonka costume. It didn’t really stay on my head very well, but I had fun making it. Thankfully a friend saved my costume by lending me her velvet top hat.

Apple Cockaigne Recipe adapted from Joy of Cooking

The pastry resembles a pie, so you don’t have to work it too much. Also, using an 8″8 pan seemed just enough to make about 9 segments. I also reduced the amount of topping because there was a lot of brown sugar that just kind of sat on top of the apple slices. Afterall, it’s that gorgeous apple fan I’m going for. And to make it a little bit more interesting, I added some ginger to the topping.

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbspn butter, crumbled
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tspn vanilla
• approx 1/4 cup milk
• 3 cups sliced apples

Topping

• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp ginger
• 3 tbsp melted butter

1. Preheat oven to 425°F
2. To make the cake, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add the crumbled butter and work the dough like how you’d make pie pastry — according to Joy of Cooking, that means working the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter so that the flour resembles coarse cornmeal. I think the reason why pastry cutters are used for pie dough is to minimize the handling of the dough, which will result in a tender, flakier crust.
3. In another bowl, beat together the egg, vanilla, and enough milk to make a 1/2 cup mixture, and gradually add to the flour to make a stiff dough. At this point, you should be able to form a ball of dough with your hands.
4. Flatten the dough onto the greased pan with a spoon, pushing it out evenly toward the edges.
5. Closely place the apple slices in overlapping rows on top.
6. To prepare the topping, combine all its ingredients and mix well with a fork. Sprinkle it on top, but don’t bury the apple pie beneath — you should still be able to see the slices.
7. Bake away for 25 minutes. The juice of the apple will bubble around the edges, and the cake is really good warmed. If it’s being served later on, the cake can always be re-heated in the oven with some foil over top for about 10 minutes on the lowest oven setting — I think that’s 180°F

 

I went to an apple orchard and never wished to leave

Thankfully, Saturday was all blue sky, and my sister had an ingenious idea to go apple-picking over the long weekend. Even though it was her idea, sadly she couldn’t join us because Thanksgiving weekend is also the very vulnerable time of colds, coughs and exams. She sent us out with a mission to bring back blueberry pie.

Orchard!

We didn’t even have to drive past our area code and into long-distance zone to find an orchard at Pine Farms. Isn’t it beautiful? You can get happily lost in between these fragrant rows ..

Red deliciousness

I overheard one woman tell her husband(?) that Red Delicious are the kind she always buys in the store .. so shouldn’t they look for apples they don’t normally get? That was my thinking too..

Favourite row

So on our left we were walking past the Mac/Spartan orchards, and on our right side was a row of Wealthy apples. Is it telling that all the fruit from the Wealthy trees were already taken? There were a lot of apples that had fallen beneath that row too, and there was this golden facet to the red apple colour that reminded me of something regal in a fairy tale. The funny thing was that although most of the apples were picked off the Wealthy tree, the fallen fruit was still twice as shiny and bright than the dustier Mac/Spartan varieties still adorning the branches.

Love the fall colours in the background

Bag of spoils

We couldn't resist!

Onto the shop ..

9 out of 10 North American kids would tell you they first associate pumpkins with Thanksgiving. Okay, so I made that stat up, but can we get any more festive on a weekend like this?

Very crowded shop and very serious looking shopper.

I bought one! It's a Quebec-style meat pie with pork and beef and it will bring me much happiness on a cold winter day

Soup and more pies to take home

Pine Farms Orchard - we'll be back next year!

 

Creme Brûlée

A timely fix to having too many egg yolks after making angel food cake fell on this Thanksgiving weekend, where time and company allowed for this first attempt at creme brûlée. Actually, our family didn’t do anything elaborate this year (we were still sated from last weekend’s Chinese mid-Autumn Festival), but having my sister back for the holiday, dinner with the whole family was still much enjoyed.

It took me a while to find the equipment and recipe to make a basic creme brûlée, because I don’t have a torch with which to caramelize the top, and so I wasn’t sure which ramekins could be used in an oven broiler. I ended up getting medium-sized porcelain ramekins from the Loblaw Superstore (where would we be without Loblaw ..) and found a “straightforward and unpretentious” recipe online from this woman who crowns herself the undisputed Queen of Creme Brûlée.

The recipe is surprisingly easy, but the tricky part is in the oven. The baking time was too short, or put another way, it’s hard to tell when the pastry cream (another alias for creme brûlée, as a similar recipe is used as vanilla cream in cakes) is set when you can’t slit a knife and break the top surface. My sister had a good trick where upon contact, the pastry cream should bounce back a little if it’s done. Also, they say it’s best to make creme brûlée one day before serving, so that it can chill for at least 12 hours in the fridge before caramelized and served. The pastry cream turned out really light, and melted in your mouth! I don’t like it when the texture is too gelatinous and custard-like — the creme brûlée here is nice and light.

Classic creme brûlée Recipe adapted from Debbie Puente

• 8 egg yolks (which can be stored and frozen .. I’ll be writing about this later)
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 2 cups or 500 mL of heavy cream (35% MF)
• 1 generous teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 300ºF.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar until sugar has dissolved and the mixture is thick and pale yellow. Add cream and vanilla, and continue to whisk until well blended.
3. Strain into a large bowl, skimming off any foam and bubbles.
   

   Strained and silky smooth!

4. Divide mixture into 4 porcelain ramekins. Place ramekins in a water bath (large pan filled with two inches of hot water). The easiest way to do this is set the ramekins into the pan first, and fill a kettle to pour in the water.
5. Bake until set around the edges, but still loose in the centre, about 60-75 minutes. You can’t really puncture the pastry cream like you would a cake, otherwise you’d loose the smooth texture. In this case, lightly touch to see if the pastry cream sets back.
6. Remove from oven and leave in the water bath until cooled. Remove cups from water bath and chill for at least 12 hours, or up to 2 days.
7. When ready to serve, sprinkle some white sugar on the surface for a caramelized top. If the custard has been chilled for 12 hours, put ramekins in a cold oven and turn on the oven to broiler setting (heat from above), heating until sugar caramelizes. If the custard has been chilled less than 12 hours, put the dish in a shallow pan and surround with ice. Place under hot broiler long enough to let the sugar form a caramelized crust. Another tip that Joy of Cooking offers is to do this step with the oven door open, keeping a close eye on the dish. The sugar will caramelize really quickly! No more than five minutes .. even less than that probably.
8. Serve at once! But warn your guests that the ramekin will be a tad hot.

 

The weekender

Starting off the Thanksgiving weekend right …

French toast warmed with caramelized peaches and maple yogurt

 

Quick! Get your back issues of Gourmet

Who do you think you are, Condé Nast?!

(says little girl in rageful fit, pounding on the steel pecs of a stoic and very tall Bully whose head is cut off from the frame, the kind that only stands there, unmovable and yet moving everything within its blast radius around himself)

.. closing down epicurean mags like much-loved Gourmet! I only started to read Gourmet after falling into the delicious concoction of sixty food writers in Endless Feasts. The sensual, palpable writing of what we love to eat took me away, no doubt about it. I wonder what Ruth Reichl is doing today then, on the first day out of office? Could she be cooking up mushroom soup, that neutral and warm comfort that is easily goes down? Is she binging on Swiss chocolate at 9 in the morning? Are the writers of Gourmet crying in their kicthens, rocking back and forth in their aprons?

The worst part is that Bon Appetit escaped the cut, still wrapped in-tact the butcher’s paper. And they were considered junk circ for the longest time! Boo.

Depressing photos of the burial ground (aka empty offices). Reading the comments on the news pieces are like a eulogy.

At least Epicurious.com will still be running ..