Saturday, 4 February 2012

Apple Galette with Toffee Sauce

A galette in French cuisine means flat, round or freeform crusty cakes. This simple, but effective dessert, utilizes that marvelous stuff known as puff pastry, that can make many a dessert or savoury treat look special.

If you are feeling particularly creative then go ahead and make your own puff pastry. I however, decided to use the ready made stuff. It really does make this dessert much simpler. You can compensate by making your own toffee sauce, like I did, or again you can pick up some ready made sauce.

You can use any dessert apple but I used Pink Lady, because it is firm, sweet and juicy. I chose to leave the skin on as the beautiful pink red skin looked pretty, but you can peel your apples too if you prefer.

Ingredients:
  • 225g ready made puff pastry
  • 2-3 firm apples, halved and cored.
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 40g caster sugar
  • ½ teaspoon cinnamon
Method:
  1. Pre-heat oven to 200 C / 400 F / Gas 6
  2. Draw yourself an apple template, slightly larger than the apples you are using, on some greaseproof paper and cut out.
  3. Using a sharp knife, cut around the template until you have all the apple shapes cut out. You should be able to make at least 8
  4. Mix together the sugar and cinnamon and set aside
  5. Take a half an apple, and slice if very thinly.
  6. Starting at the outsides, lay the slices moving inwards.
  7. Use smaller slices or trim some down for the centre.
  8. Brush with egg, then sprinkle generously with the cinnamon sugar.
  9. Bake for 11-12 minutes until the pastry is puffed up and top is crunchy and golden brown
Serve with toffee sauce and a dollop of whipped cream.
 For the toffee sauce:
  1. Put 50g of caster sugar in a pan with 1 tablespoon of water.
  2. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves
  3. Turn the heat up and boil until it goes golden and begins to caramelise. Swirl the pan to prevent burning but do not stir - this will form sugar crystals and make your sauce gritty.
  4. Once it starts to caramelise, take it off the heat and whisk in a 140ml double cream until smooth.



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