About the only problem I’ve ever had with baked apples is that they seem a little too filling. So much apple, so little else.
Unless you’ve thrown together a little custard sauce to float them in, traditional recipes are relatively uninspiring. At least that’s what I thought several years ago when attempting to improve upon the concept.
My goal was to come up with something that would retain the wholesomeness of the traditional version, be less filling, yet exciting enough to the eye and palate of a fussy ’90s kind of family.
I shouldn’t have bothered. My son eyed the beautiful little apple sitting atop a flaky round of pastry and overflowing with a filling of gingersnaps, brown sugar and butter.
"What’s this?" he asked in a tone edged with caution.
He figured this as one of my experiments and that he was, at best, skating on thin ice.
So he inhaled deeply and took a bite. No cartwheels.
"If I don’t like it are you going to embarrass me by writing about it?" he asked.
"Now what kind of mother do you think I am?"
"Well, the apple’s OK. And I like this whipped cream stuff with the chunks of cookie in it. But the crust isn’t sweet enough. Maybe if it was, you know, that shortbread stuff or something."
At this point my beloved jumped into the conversation.
"The apples are too firm," he said. "And personally, I think the pastry is too sweet. What kind is it, anyway?"
After I covered the fact that it was a traditional French pate brise, and he pointed out that if his mother had made it then maybe it would have worked, we ended the discussion.
But don’t let that discourage you from trying my baked apple creation. Over the years I’ve made improvements to those first efforts. And I think it’s delicious, especially this time of year when down-home country cooking tastes especially good. You just have to know who to invite to dinner.
Baked apple halves with hazelnut crumble and cookies ‘n’ cream topping
Combine hazelnuts, gingersnap cookie crumbs with the oatmeal and brown sugar. Stir in melted butter until the mixture is combined.
Yields about 1 3/4 cups.
Cookies ‘n’ cream topping
Whip the heavy cream to firm peaks, adding sugar to taste midway through the process. Stir in the crumbled gingersnaps. Refrigerate mixture for about 30 minutes so cookie chunks have a chance to soften.
Yields about 2 1/2 cups.
Jan Roberts-Dominguez is a Corvallis, Ore., food writer, cookbook author and artist. Readers can contact her by email at janrd@proaxis.com.
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