Nigel Slater’s Croissants with Caramelised Apples and Ice Cream
This is a quick, informal dessert, adapted from Nigel Slater, and which I have renamed loosely renamed Apples in the French Style A La Mode. Quite simply, it is apples cooked in a brandy sozzled syrup, served over warm croissants, topped with your favourite vanilla, vanilla or caramel ice cream.
I pity the non-pudding people. Those who decline dessert for cheese and crackers, or coffee instead. I could not, even under the threat of torture, choose between sweet or savoury food. For someone to recklessly declare ‘I’m a savoury person’ is completely incredulous to me.
More incredulous even, than people who don’t like cheese. Not liking cheese! Talking from the point of view of somebody whose intake of calcium is purely through copious intakes of daily cheese, this is like saying, “I don’t like oxygen”.
Of course, everybody has wildly varying tastes and if this wasn’t the case, then planning meals around everyone’s food preferences would be so much less interesting and, ahem, challenging.
Even so, when I go out for a meal the dessert course is always the dish that I desire the strongest. True, I enjoy the starter and main courses too, but there is something about the pudding, the anticipation because it is always served last but not least. I am always hugely upset when I am too full on the starter and main course to partake in dessert and to this end, I often make a dessert which I will serve to my dining companions, much later on, when we’ve left the restaurant. It seems like it defeats the purpose of eating out, I suppose, if you make your own dessert but I find it works well. Also, you can command the portion sizes too…
I love all desserts. From puddings to pies, cakes to choux buns, ice cream to cheesecake, pavlova to knickerbocker glory. All of them inhabit a special, jewel-encrusted space in my heart.
What Are The Best Cooking Apples?
I use Bramley cooking apples because they have the best flavour and retain their shape during cooking. Also, you get a lot of apple for your buck with these huge cooking ones!
I don’t recommend eating cooking apples raw as they are quite tart, and taste quite different to smaller eating apples, however they are so perfect for baking or cooking. However, some cooking apples do tend to leach a little more liquid than eating, or can go a little “foamy” when you first start to cook them. This can cause the infamous soggy bottom in apple pies!
However, because we are simply cooking them in a buttery, caramelly sauce, we don’t need to worry too much here.
If you only have eating apples in your fruit bowl at home and can’t be bothered to go and find some Bramleys, don’t worry! These will be just fine. You may need to use a couple more, as they are much smaller than cooking apples, and they make take a little longer to cook down, but they will work fine.
Do not use crab apples. These are really best in a jam or chutney, where they have been cooked down slowly with lots of sugar and other flavourings to minimize the deeply astringent flavour.
Nigel Slater’s Croissants with Caramelised Apples and Ice Cream
INGREDIENTS
- 2 cooking apples cored, quartered, then quartered again.
- 25 g butter
- 2 Tablespoons Caster Sugar If you can find it, use golden which imparts a much more caramel-ly flavour than regular caster sugar
- 1 tbsp Brandy Apple brandy would be great, I happened to use my homemade quince brandy because that was all I had, regular would also be fine.
- 2 Croissants large
- 4 scoops Ice cream Vanilla or Caramel flavour.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Melt the butter in a saute pan until it starts to gently sizzle.
- Add the apple slices.
- Cook until starting to go golden on each side, no more than five minutes.
- Add the sugar and brandy, let it all whoosh up and coat the apple pieces.
- Cook gently for another couple of minutes.
- Meanwhile, split the croissants and warm under a hot grill, do not toast though.
- Pour the bronzed and sticky apples over the split, warmed croissants and put a couple of scoops of ice cream on each half.
