Ingredient: apple

Maybe French Apple Cake

(stealing is that thing geniuses do right?)

This really isn’t my recipe. It just might be my favorite cake though. Our mum passed a couple of years back and she really loved to make it, so maybe there’s a bit of nostalgia mixed in there, but… anyway. Me and my brother Olov especially love this cake. And you know, he had a food blog called “Falsk Mat” (it’s in Swedish, I’ve linked to it before). And he also wanted to tell the world (more precisely Sweden) about this cake. But it’s not his cake either. He named it: “Mammas franska äppelkaka” (“Mum’s French Apple Cake“). Suck up much Olov? I kid. I really shouldn’t use such an arrogant tone as this is unquestionably yet another chapter in “posting recipes that Olov has already posted”.

So it’s our mum’s cake? Well, she did have a real good run when she made it on an at least semi-regular basis. But it’s not quite her cake either, though she did tweak it to become much better (suck up much… myself?).

It’s from the Swedish cook book “Vår kokbok” (“Our Cook Book”) or possibly “Annas mat” (“Anna’s Food”) where the cake is called “Hanna’s franska äppelkaka” (“Hanna’s French Apple Cake”). So it’s a French apple cake out of a Swedish cook book from a time in which I really don’t think Sweden had other food cultures quite nailed down. I’m not sure if it’s really that French is what I’m trying to say.

To us though, it really is our mum’s cake. At first, I wasn’t completely sure if I remembered what she changed, but I had a feeling she primarily upped the batter to apples ratio. I spoke to Olov about it and said that I kind of remember something about mum liking the batter a lot and that she might have increased it in the recipe. He said…

“oh yes, she really loved the batter. I remember her saying, about the amounts in the recipe from the cook book ‘It has to be a mistake…‘”

….which I had completely forgotten but jolted me back to hearing her say it, which was really lovely.

Then I spoke with my dad, who sent me the recipe from the cook book in which mum had made notes about increasing the batter (+50%). Well… she adjusted it further upwards since, to almost +200%! Aaaaand I’ll be honest… when I did it from a recipe that mum jotted down for Olov, I actually thought “It has to be a mistake…” because there was sooo much batter. I guess we’ve come full circle 🙂 So, you know, dial it back by a third if you like, but be sure to try mum’s maxed out version first!

I’m counting on that this mind blowing exposition has led you straight to the heart of the issue? We’ve ended up with a heck of a cake here. Combined with home made vanilla ice cream it’s downright dangerous.

Do it right away and never look back. And hey, if it goes well: why not dedicate it to a parent?

Special Equipment

  • Ice cream maker
  • Immersion blender
  • Thermometer
Created with Sketch. 60 minutes + oven time Created with Sketch. 10 (cake), 5 (ice cream)

Ingredients

  • For the cake
  • 5 large apples (adjust if you use smaller apples)
  • 200 galmond
  • 300 gbutter
  • 320 gsugar (ca 4 dl)
  • 6 eggs
  • 3 lemons
  • For the vanilla ice cream
  • 4 egg yolks (ca 80 g, take 5 yolks if the eggs are smaller)
  • 2.5 dlcream
  • 2.5 dlmilk
  • 1 vanilla rod (or 2 if you're feeling wealthy)
  • 70 gsugar (just short of a dl)

Directions

  1. Start with the ice cream. This is basically this recipe but with vanilla instead of popcorn, so I’m gonna go through it pretty quickly. Slice the vanilla rod and scrape out the seeds. Heat up the milk and cream with the vanilla rod. When it comes to a boil, take it off the heat.

  2. Whisk the yolks (4) and the sugar (70 g) together. Pour the hot milk/cream- mix over the whisked sugar and yolks while whisking.
  3. Put the resulting mix back on the stove on medium to low heat. While stirring with a flat bottomed wooden spoon or spatula, let the mixture reach 82-84 C and then take it off the heat, and let it cool down in the fridge (let the vanilla rod stay in the batter). After an hour and onwards, it’s ready for the ice cream maker.
  4. Now for the cake: peel the apples and cut them into big pieces (roughly 1/4). Put them in a pan, cover them with water and add 1 dl of sugar. Bring this to a boil and let it simmer for about 3-5 minutes.
  5. Mix the butter (300 g) and sugar (240 g) together.
  6. Crack the eggs (6) and divvy upp the white and the yolks in different bowls.
  7. Add the juice from the lemons (3) and the peel from one lemon to the yolks. Then add the almonds (200 g) and mix with an immersion blender until the almonds are really smashed into pieces (the consistency should be like a loose-ish porridge). Stir this in with the sugar/butter- mix.

  8. Put the oven to 200 C.
  9. Whisk the egg whites into a thick foam.
  10. Put the boiled apples into an oven shape, turn the egg white foam into the almond/yolk/sugar/butter/lemon- mix, and pour everything over the apples.

  11. Bake in the oven on 200 C for about 30 minutes.

Let it cool down for at least 20-30 minutes before serving. If it’s at all hot when serving it’s gonna look more like this…

…than this…

…in which the cake has had time to set (in the fridge no less). Just fyi.

I’m not recommending you to it it cold mind you. I’m just preparing you for the reality with regard to the esthetics. When I sent the first picture (in which it’s more of a “pile” than a “piece” of cake) to Danilo for illustration he just replied: “I can’t illustrate that, it’s just a blob”. So, you know… it’s not a beautiful cake is all I’m saying.

Oh, and by the way, this is my mothers original recipe flaunting her rather insane hand writing.

Miss you mum.

Tarte Tatin

(accidents happen)

Tarte Tatin is a puff pastry apple… tart (well yes I guess, but is “tarte” the same thing as “tart”, no right?)? Pie? Cake? Something. It was invented by accident at Hotel Tatin in France, and thank the lord for accidents.

I’m not really sure exactly what it is about it that I like so much. I am a bit of a sucker for apples in desserts (I’ll be back with an even better but also a bit more complicated cake in a while) and there’s just something with the apple & caramelized sugar combo that’s… lovely.

It’s sweet. Maybe too sweet for some. Hanna (my girlfriend) thinks so, but she’s very sugar conservative. I might be a liiiittle bit wained off sugar but I thinks it’s right on the border, despite my recipe having quite a lot less sugar than other ones I’ve come upon. It depends a lot on the apples as well for sure. I recommend you to use quite sweet as well as not too sour apples, which might sound a bit counter productive when reading the above, but I think it fits best for this dish.

So how do you make this bad boy? Easy. You just pan-fry the apples in butter, sugar and lemon until the sugar starts to caramelize. Then you cover the the contents of the pan with puff pastry and bake it in the oven. When it has cooled down outside the oven you flip the pan upside down over a plate and out comes this lovely thing. I tend to think that it’s ok to buy the puff pastry. The store bought one is mostly pretty good and it’s a bit of a chore to do it.

Best eaten with vanilla ice cream so I’ll include a simple recipe for that as well. Mmmmm.

Special Equipment

  • Frying pan that you can put in the oven (most modern ones qualify)
Created with Sketch. 40 min Created with Sketch. 6-ish

Ingredients

  • For the Tarte Tatin
  • 4 quite bigapples (maybe five)
  • 1 lemon
  • 75 gbutter
  • 75 gsugar (ca 0.9 dl)
  • 300 gpuff pastry
  • For the vanilla ice cream
  • 250 gcream (2.5 dl)
  • 250 gmilk (2.5 dl)
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 70 gsugar
  • 1 vanillabean

Directions

Making the ice cream:

  1. Cut open the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and put the together with the emptied bean in a pan.
  2. Add the milk (250g, 2.5 dl) and the cream (250g, 2.5 dl)
  3. When the milk-cream mixture reaches a light simmer, take it off the heat and let it rest while continuing to step four.
  4. Gently whisk the sugar (70 g, ca 0.8 dl) with five egg yolks.
  5. Pour the vanilla cream-milk-mixture into the sugar-egg-yolks while whisking.
  6. Add the mix back into the pan and heat it slowly up to 84 C, while stirring constantly (a flat wooden spoon scraping the bottom of the pan is ideal). When it reaches 84 C, take it off the heat (important to not exceed 84 C, but if you want to stop at 82/83 C, that’s completely fine). Pour the batter into a bowl and put it into the fridge.
  7. Now the ice cream is ready to go into the ice cream maker. If you have a fancy ice cream machine (active cooling), you can put the warm ice cream batter straight into the machine.If you have a less fancy ice cream maker (freeze block cooling), you’ll have to wait for the batter to get cold before putting into the ice cream maker, otherwise the warm batter will heat the freeze block too much, and the ice cream might not get the proper consistency.

Making the Tarte Tatin:

  1. Put the oven on 200 C.
  2. Peel the apples and cut them in four or six (or something) pieces.
  3. Heat a pan to medium, add the butter (75 g). When the butter stops sizzling, add the apples.
  4. Squeeze the lemon into the pan and add the sugar (75 g, ca 0.9 dl).
  5. After a couple of minutes, lower the heat to low/medium and let the apples fry until the butter caramelizes (gently turning them ones in a while).
  6. Let the apples cool off the stove for five minutes (but still in the pan), then cover the apples with puff pastry.
  7. Put into the oven for about 15-20 minutes. When done, flip the pan over a plate. Beware of hot caramelized sugar dripping on to your wrist when turning the pan. Let it rest for a while and serve luke warm.


Making Tarte Tatin is really very easy. You might have different preferences regarding how caramelized the sugar should be, how much lemon to use and so forth, but I think you’ll be happy from the first go. If you want to get adventurous later on, try mixing the apples with pears or even parsnip(!).

Making the ice cream might seem a bit involved at first but after a while it becomes second nature. It’s really worth getting comfortable with this. Whipping up some home made ice cream is a real home run and this basic recipe is the starting point for all cream-based ice creams.