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"...

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.

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

• 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.

• 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.