dessert

It is apple season again. Time for pie and cider and eating out of hand. Time for wondering where these variously charming and exotic names of these heirlooms and hybrids came from: cox orange pippin, jonafree, fameuse, sunrise.

I think of apples as a comfort fruit. I like them prepared simply. A bit of sugar, a bit of topping, a sprinkle of cinnamon served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Apple crumble is easy enough to be thrown together in fifteen minutes and ready within an hour. It is the sort of dessert that doesn’t require a special occasion but itself becomes an excuse to turn on the oven as the weather turns brisk.

I doubt anyone needs a new apple crumble recipe. The one in Betty Crocker works just fine. But most dessert recipes are scaled to serve eight or so, and while that’s great for company, an everyday dessert like this is the sort of thing I like to make just for the two of us, and having six servings left over is an invitation to overindulge.

So this is my scaled down version, perfect for a night when Dan and I want a comforting dessert but don’t want extra. It can easily be cut in half for when you want dessert for one or multiplied for nights when you have extra guests. It is best made in stove top and oven safe cookware like these two cup enameled cast iron pots.

The apples are tossed with sugar and cinnamon and a squeeze of lemon to inhibit oxidation and then sauteed on the stove top until the apples and sugar gets nice and caramelized, an inspiration from tarte tatin. The butter gets browned, pecans get toasted toasted and chopped, and they both get mixed up with a bit of flour and a pinch of salt and sprinkled over the top of the apples. Then they go into the oven where the tops turn golden.

Classic basic flavors in a dessert that you want to remind you of every warm and wonderful apple dessert you’ve had before. It isn’t particularly exciting, but it is certainly satisfying, and it’s hard to go wrong with brown butter, pecans, cinnamon, and caramelized apples. It’s even harder to go wrong when you top it with ice cream.

Mini Brown Butter Pecan Caramelized Apple Crumbles For Two

This recipe works best in 2 cup stove top and oven safe cookware (such as these mini enameled cast iron dutch ovens), but if you wish to make these in large ramekins or other small baking dishes, you may skip the stove top caramelization step and simply bake them for an extra ten minutes or so. It won’t give you that deep caramel flavor, but it will still be delicious. You may of course, use these techniques with other fruits or with your own favorite crumble or crisp topping. This works best with slightly tart apples that work well for baking. I like to use a mix of apples and in this case used a spigold, a spuree rome, and a macoun, but feel free to use any apples you like.

For the filling:
1 pound apples (2 large apples or 3 small to medium ones)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the topping:
1/3 cup all purpose flour
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1/4 cup toasted pecans
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Peel apples and cut into 1/2 inch chunks. In a small bowl, toss apples with lemon juice to prevent oxidation, then add sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla extract.

Make the topping. Roughly chop the pecans. Mix flour, brown sugar, salt and pecans in a small bowl. Melt butter in a small sauce pan over medium heat until it begins to turn brown (the solids should be roughly the color of pecans). Remove from heat–butter can quickly go from brown to burnt. Add the butter to the flour mixture and stir until the flour is thoroughly moistened.

Divide the apple mixture evenly between two 2 cup stove and oven safe dutch ovens, and saute over medium heat until the sugars and apples begin to caramelize, about five minutes. Carefully sprinkle the flour mixture evenly over the apples, and transfer to the oven. Bake until the topping is golden brown, about 35 minutes.

Cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature, preferably with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Yield: Two servings.

It’s been a hot summer in Chicago. This July and August we’ve watched the mercury climb into the nineties more days than I care to count. Too many. I’m not a hot weather kind of girl, give me seventies and a light breeze along the lake, and I’ll take eighties with a cool drink, but nineties, uggh, nineties make me cranky.

It’s been a summer for sunscreen, for trailing my hands through neighbors’ sprinklers as they sway toward the sidewalk. It’s been a summer for open-toed shoes and sleeveless tops and sitting in the shade. But more importantly, it’s been a summer for sorbet.

We’ve been filling our bowls with bright jewel-toned orbs of the stuff: sour cherry lambic, almond, blackberry. Sorbet somehow always feels more refreshing than ice cream, the flavors more intense without the muting effects of milk fat, the bracing iciness just the thing for these hot summer days.

And when I see the bounty of summer fruits weighing down the tables at the farmers markets and have no desire to turn on the oven for, say, pie, I will happily bring home pints of whatever looks extra lovely to peel, slice, puree with sugar syrup, churn, and freeze.

One of our favorites of late has been a sorbet of Michigan peaches enlivened with a splash of jasmine liqueur from Koval Distillery, a great little boutique distillery that’s practically in our neighborhood. There’s something enchanting about the hint of floral jasmine combined with the succulent sweetness of peach that makes this sorbet sing. The alcohol also helps to give this sorbet an excellent texture.

I can’t get enough peaches when they’re in season, and the peaches at the market this summer have been gorgeous.

This puts those beauties to good use. And provides a little relief from the heat.

Peach Jasmine Sorbet

Source: Loosely adapted from Jeni Britton in Food & Wine and David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop

The alcohol helps to keep this sorbet scoopable. If you live in an area where Koval liqueurs are available, do seek them out, if not, substitute another liqueur such as St. Germain, which is similar in alcohol content, or substitute half the amount of a liquor such as bourbon. If you prefer not to use corn syrup, you may substitute sugar, but be advised that liquid sweeteners such as corn syrup or glucose improve the texture. Do use ripe sweet peaches if possible (save underripe hard ones, which are lower in sugar but higher in pectin, for jam). The ones I used for this last one were bruised and overripe, which was an advantage here.

2 pounds of ripe peaches (about 6 or 7)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup corn syrup or glucose (or equal amount of sugar)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup Koval Jasmine Liqueur (or St. Germain, or 2 tablespoons bourbon)

Combine the sugar, corn syrup or glucose, and water in small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat.

Blanch the peaches in a large pot of boiling water for about 2 minutes, drain and run under cold water. Peel the peaches–the skin should slip off fairly easily. Remove the pits, and dice the peaches.

Puree the peaches with the sugar syrup in a blender (or use an immersion blender in a high sided container) until smooth. Stir in the jasmine liqueur.

Chill the mixture in a refrigerator overnight. Then churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Store in the freezer for several hours before eating.

Yield: About one quart.

On Saturdays in the summer, my routine almost invariably includes a trip to the Evanston Farmers Market. From time to time, I think about swapping my northerly trek for a southerly one and finally checking out the Green City Market or just making a quick trip to the little Edgewater Market that’s within walking distance, but then I think about the crates upon crates of heirloom varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers and garlic and fingerling potatoes and the little bundles of shiso and the mesclun dotted with delicate flowers and the red amaranth and all the colors of carrots at Henry’s Farm stand, and my decision is simple. I put on my shoes, throw my unwashed hair in a ponytail and head out the door.

When there are so many options, it’s easy get home and discover I’ve lugged back something that wasn’t quite what I expected. This beauty of a watermelon was a recent find from Henry’s stand that took us by surprise. In a good way. We didn’t know it was any special variety, but when we cut it open, we found brilliant yellow flesh inside.

This baby was crisp and juicy and incredibly sweet. And it was yellow. Really yellow.

I always thought of pink watermelon as the quintessential summer fruit in a so-refreshing-dripping-down-your-chin-as-you-spit-seeds-in-the-backyard sort of way, but somehow this yellow version seems even more of the season.

And as we near the end of summer, what better way to hang on to it than to turn it into sorbet and freeze it?

This watermelon sorbet is bright sunshine yellow and about as close as it comes to keeping a container of concentrated summer in the freezer. Sweet and icy with just enough lime to cut through the sugar, a little scoop of this hits the spot on a hot day. Or any day, really.

It is another satisfying recipe from David Lebovitz’s recent book on all things ice cream, The Perfect Scoop. (I seem to be on a yellow kick lately–a few weeks ago the lemon speculoos ice cream recipe from the same book had me struggling to save every last drip at the bottom of the bowl.)

Watermelon Sorbet

Source: adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

This sorbet comes together easily. The trickiest part is picking the seeds out of the watermelon before you puree it into juice. The original recipe calls for mini chocolate chips to be mixed in the end. I omitted them, but you can feel free to stir some in before you put away the finished sorbet. The flavor of watermelon is delicate, and the vodka and lime flavors are detectable here. I like it that way, but you should probably omit the vodka if you really don’t want to know it’s there.

About a 3 pound (1 1/2 kilogram) chunk of watermelon
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons vodka

Cut away the rind of the watermelon and remove the seeds. Cut the flesh into manageable pieces and add to a blender or food processor and puree until liquid. You should have about 3 cups of juice (puree a little more watermelon or set aside the extra juice for another use if necessary). Pour into a medium mixing bowl and set aside.

In a small saucepan, heat 1/2 cup watermelon juice, sugar and salt until all of the sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and add to the bowl with the watermelon juice. Stir in the lime juice and vodka.

Chill in the refrigerator overnight and then process in an ice cream maker.

Yields 1 quart of sorbet.