Apple tart

I made an apple tart for a belated Christmas dinner. Actually it was lunch. I dug into my cardboard boxes in het cellar to find the little book with my grandfather's recipes. He gave instructions for dough and pastry cream, but not for the apples, so I improvised.

For the dough

250 g flour
pinch of salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar
180 g butter
1 egg yolk
1/2 dl water

For the pastry cream

1 egg
50 g sugar
3 tbsp flour
1 packet vanilla sugar or 1/2 vanilla pod
1/2 l milk
pinch of salt

For the apples

4 apples (not a mushy type)
juice of 1/2 lemon
some sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Add salt, sugar and vanilla sugar to flour and mix. Add butter and egg yolk and knead into a dough. Add the water bit by bit.
Let the dough rest for 2 hours in the fridge.
Grease a tart dish, roll out the dough and put it in the dish. Cover with baking paper and with baking beans. Bake for 25 min. at 200° C. Remove baking paper and beans and let it cool for a bit.
Peel and core the apples and slice them very thinly. Cover them with lemon juice to prevent them from browning. Take the apples out of the juice and cook them at very low heat with some sugar and cinnamon. They should just be slightly cooked and not fall apart.
Whisk egg with sugar in a cooking pan, add flour and whisk again.
Boil milk with vanilla (sugar). After boiling, add it to the egg and let it boil for a few minutes until it thickens. Pour into the baked dough.
Decorate with the apples. Put the slices close together.

Notes
I wonder if the pastry cream would taste even better when made just with the egg yolk instead of the whole egg.
You can put the apple slices closer together than I did in the picture.
The dough shrinks a little when baking, so you can leave an extra cm at the bordere when filling the tart dish.

According to my grandfather you could also make this tart with bananas or other fruit, which you don't need to cook.

New Year's walk

Last year we inaugurated the new year with a walk by the seaside. I thoroughly enjoyed it and decided to start a tradition. This year we didn't manage to get to the seaside, but discovered the beautiful surroundings of Vollezele. You can find a full report at Leafy Cooking.

Of course we didn't forget to take a snack, tasty waffles by Brussels specialist Dandoy.

And after the walk labelga treated us to delicious appetizers.

I'm all for lots more walks like this in 2009!

Semifreddo di mele

Another dessert I prepared for New Year's Eve was this semifreddo, a type of custard with cooked apples underneath, and with a lemony twinge. I finished it off with grilled 'peperkoek' crumbs, inspired by a cook in Normandy.



The recipe is from the birthday present from my godchild A.V., born on 13 November 2008: The Vegeterranean, recipes by Brasilian Malu Simões and her Italian husband Alberto Musacchio.

Serves 6

For the apples

5 big apples, or 6 smaller ones
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
rind of 1/2 lemon

For the cream

500 ml milk
rind of 1/2 lemon
1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped
4 tbsp sugar
4 egg yolks
4 tbsp flour
1 slice peperkoek, grilled and crumbled

Peel and core the apples. Slice thinly. Squeeze the lemon juice over the apples to prevent browning. Cook with sugar, cinnamon and lemon rind over a low heat, covered. Stir occasionally. Remove from the heat when the apples begin to caramelise, about 5 min.

Bring milk, lemon rind and vanilla to a boil, then turn off the heat. Whisk sugar and egg yolks in another saucepan until pale yellow. Sift in the flour and mix well. Remove lemon rind and vanilla from the milk and pour it into the egg mixture, whisking all the time.
Cook this cream in a double boiler (bain marie) over a medium heat for a few minutes, until it thickens.

Pour apple mixture into a dish and pour warm cream on top. Alternatively you can divide the dessert over small martini glasses or bowls. Let it cool, then refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving. Decorate with grilled peperkoek crumbs.

Notes:
The cream was quite thick, I recommend to use small tbsps of flour.
After tasting both apples and cream, I added more sugar.
I need to work on the technique for grilling the peperkoek crumbs, perhaps our cook from Normandy can advise...

Walnut cake

We spent New Year's Eve in the company of friends. Everybody was asked to bring a dish. I prepared two desserts, with expert help. One of them was a walnut cake. A friend gave me the recipe when we were students. It's a very easy recipe and it always meets with succes.
It's the first thing I baked in my new oven and it came out wonderfully.

For the cake:

4 eggs
200 g sugar
250 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
80 g walnuts, chopped
1 glass sunflower oil

For the topping:

2 eggs
150 g sugar
125 g soft butter
150 g walnuts, chopped + a few whole walnuts for decoration
1 tbsp rum

Beat egg yolks and sugar into a creamy mixture.
Mix baking powder into the flour and add this to the egg yolks.
Add chopped walnuts and oil and mix well.
Beat egg whites and add them to the mixture.
Grease a cake tin and add the mixture.
Bake for 30-40 min at 180° C.

Prepare the topping: mix eggs, sugar and butter into a smooth cream. Then add chopped walnuts and rum.
Let the cake cool, then add the topping on top and/or in the middle.
Decorate with a few whole walnuts.

Notes
The cake was a little dry, maybe 200 g flour is enough.
The topping is a big quantity and very rich, so you might also halve the quantities and only add it on top or only in the middle.

Last and first soup

Finally another post with one of the last things I cooked in 2008. With many changes in my life, such as a new family to get to know, and moving into a new place, it's pretty hard to find time to fiddle with photos and to blog.

Here comes the first soup I cooked in my new kitchen, it's Jerusalem artichoke according to my basic soup recipe and we had it with backerbsen, something from long ago, when we went skiing in Germany, and which we really loved as kids.

It was eaten in good company ;-)