Quiet Monday night. A craving for a homey apple dessert. Ta-dah!
A year and a half ago, I made Bill Granger's puffed apple pancake from his book Holiday. (Blogged here). Not sure what went wrong with the recipe (or if the fault was on my end), but I was singularly unimpressed by it, finding it "bland and doughy". Blergh. However, the idea of a crisp, puffy dough baked with apples is a winning one, and I found myself making my own version of it last night.
I started by chopping up a couple of granny smiths, and cooking them in butter, vanilla sugar and half a scraped-out-vanilla pod (as I did with Nigella's Sweetheart Croutes). If you're planning on eating the finished product with maple syrup or honey, you could probably omit the sugar totally.
For the dough, I made a half-quantity of Nigella's batter for sweet Yorkshire pudding (and if you want to see a truly puffed-up baked pancake, then look no further than the time I made this pudding in March '06 - here!).
While the batter was resting and the apples were frying, I had the oiled pie-dish heating up in the 230C oven. When everything was ready, I tipped the apples into the sizzling-hot dish, and poured the batter over. (Tip - pour the batter from a jug to avoid messy spillage).
Then back into the oven it went for an agonizing 20 minutes. I love how when you make Yorkshire pudding, you can see the batter crispening up and rising, millimetre by millimetre.
Immodest of me to say, I know, but the pudding was frikkin AWESOME! The batter had a tantalising contrast between crispy edges and doughy interior, and there were heaps of delicious, vanilla-flecked cooked apples throughout. It was easier to make than an apple crumble (no rubbing butter & flour between your fingers, just some lazy whisking required), and the generous amount of dough made it so much more comforting.
We had it with a thick dusting of icing sugar, but I think it would be perfect with a good quality vanilla ice-cream (Mövenpick for choice!). Just imagine the ice-cream melting oozily into the doughy parts of the batter. Yum..
It was a 20cm pie dish, and in ordinary circumstances, I'd say this pudding would feed 4. Last night, it only fed 2. Shhh...
Quiet Monday night. A craving for a homey apple dessert. Ta-dah!
A year and a half ago, I made Bill Granger's puffed apple pancake from his book Holiday. (Blogged here). Not sure what went wrong with the recipe (or if the fault was on my end), but I was singularly unimpressed by it, finding it "bland and doughy". Blergh. However, the idea of a crisp, puffy dough baked with apples is a winning one, and I found myself making my own version of it last night.
I started by chopping up a couple of granny smiths, and cooking them in butter, vanilla sugar and half a scraped-out-vanilla pod (as I did with Nigella's Sweetheart Croutes). If you're planning on eating the finished product with maple syrup or honey, you could probably omit the sugar totally.
For the dough, I made a half-quantity of Nigella's batter for sweet Yorkshire pudding (and if you want to see a truly puffed-up baked pancake, then look no further than the time I made this pudding in March '06 - here!).
While the batter was resting and the apples were frying, I had the oiled pie-dish heating up in the 230C oven. When everything was ready, I tipped the apples into the sizzling-hot dish, and poured the batter over. (Tip - pour the batter from a jug to avoid messy spillage).
Then back into the oven it went for an agonizing 20 minutes. I love how when you make Yorkshire pudding, you can see the batter crispening up and rising, millimetre by millimetre.
Immodest of me to say, I know, but the pudding was frikkin AWESOME! The batter had a tantalising contrast between crispy edges and doughy interior, and there were heaps of delicious, vanilla-flecked cooked apples throughout. It was easier to make than an apple crumble (no rubbing butter & flour between your fingers, just some lazy whisking required), and the generous amount of dough made it so much more comforting.
We had it with a thick dusting of icing sugar, but I think it would be perfect with a good quality vanilla ice-cream (Mövenpick for choice!). Just imagine the ice-cream melting oozily into the doughy parts of the batter. Yum..
It was a 20cm pie dish, and in ordinary circumstances, I'd say this pudding would feed 4. Last night, it only fed 2. Shhh...
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