Sunday, November 05, 2006

Toffee treat by Stirway to Heaven

I've spent quite some time in front of my computer these last three days, as the girls are ill(during the school holidays!) I discovered a great Dutch site called Stirway to heaven on my daily visit to Food Porn watch, (the English-language equivalent of blog appétit.) It's a treasure chest of sweet recipes, chocolate, cookies... I just had to try the Toffee Treat, one of the latest posts, and took the liberty of translating it to French for the Blog Apetit community. I also noted the recipe for "Sweet Pretzel"...

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Friday, November 03, 2006

Normandy apple tart and honey ice cream

The girls are on school holidays this week with a busy program in store : cinema, museums, bike rides, seeing friends,... and cooking with mum in the kitchen ! Here's a recipe to start with - apple tart and home-made honey ice cream from chef Jean-luc Tartarin.

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Preparation : 50 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Ingredients for 4 :
5 apples
Pastry :
60 gr butter
60 gr icing sugar
2 egg yolks
150 gr plain flour
1 pinch of salt
Pralin :
100 gr sugar
50 gr flour
50 gr powdered almonds
1 tbsp cinnamon powder
50 gr softened butter
Honey ice cream :
50 cl half fat milk
4 egg yolks
200 gr honey
15 cl single cream

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  • Pastry : Mix the icing sugar with the flour. Add the butter in lumps in the middle.
  • Crush the butter with the ends of your fingers, mixing in with the flour.
  • Beat the eggs with the salt, and add to the preceeding mixture.
  • Kneed the mixture together and into a ball with your hands. Flour the outside, and cool for an hour.
  • Honey ice cream : Bring the milk to the boil.
  • Beat the eggs and honey together in a bowl.
  • Pour the hot milk over the eggs and honey. Whisk together, and pass through a strainer.
  • Heat the mixture in a bain-marie on a medium heat until the mixture thickens stirring with a wooden spoon.
  • Take off the heat and leave to cool.
  • Mix in the single cream, and freeze the mixture using an ice-cream maker. Place in the freezer.
  • Pralin : Mix the sugar, flour, almond powder and cinnamon in a bowl.
  • Add the softened butter.
  • In a tart mould (or individual moulds) :
  • Roll out the pastry. Line the mould with ovenproof paper, or for individual moulds, I butter the inside and then use strips of paper, which help when turning out the tarts.

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  • Apply the pastry base and prick with a fork.
  • Peel, core and cut the apples into small cubes of around 1cm.
  • Fill the tarts with apple, then cover the top with the pralin.
  • Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve the tart warm with a spoon of ice cream and sprinkled with icing sugar.