After the second earthquake struck, residents of Padang, West Sumatra, in Indonesia walked through different areas to inspect the damage.
I have to say that I wasn’t too sure about this
Apple Kuchen when I started putting it together. I did not doubt that it would be tasty…I
mean, apples and custard inside a sweet crust….yeah, that’s good, obvi. This sounded like it would be the high-rise
cousin to the low-rise Alsatian Apple Tart.
It’s just that I did not get off to a very good start making it.
The crust was easy enough to make and roll out,
but let me tell you that getting a soft, delicate crust pressed neatly into a
tall springform pan is a pain in the you-know-what. It was frustrating enough that the dough
cracked into like a 1,000 pieces, but while I was pressing them back together
into something crudely resembling a crust, the clasp on said springform decided
to pop and now will not stay closed (actually, now it’s in the recycle
bin). Ugh. I needed to go with it at that point, so I
put a tight rubber band around the pan to hold it closed, dusted cookie crumbs
on the bottom, piled it full of apples and chucked it in the oven to par
bake. Not my most brilliant idea, as
within a few minutes, the rubber band popped in the heat and the buckle opened
up again, cracking the crust. I
scrambled around and found a small pie pan that was big enough to hold the
springform but tight enough to keep the buckle in the closed position. The dough was still soft at that point and
seemed to come back together when the pan was re-closed, but with all those
apples in there, I really couldn’t tell what condition it was in.
After the par bake, I poured in the crème fraiche
custard (confession:I replaced 1/3 of the crème fraiche amount with buttermilk
to lighten the calories a bit) and scattered on some plumped raisins. I was amazed that the custard did not
immediately leak out the pan, so I hoped for the best. I was just making a half-recipe (6″), but I
left it in the oven the full time. A
knife poked into the center still didn’t come out completely clean after an
hour, but I took it out away. After it
came to room temp, I popped my springform-in-pie-plate contraption it into the
fridge for extra insurance that the custard would be fully set. And then the moment of truth…
Guess what.
The crust was perfect. There was
not one spot torn or cracked and not a drop of custard had leaked out. How this happened, I do not know. It’s like it self-healed in the oven. It was very handsome, actually, and
delicious…chockablock full of chunky apple pieces with rummy custard seeped
around them. Now that I know to relax
about the crust, next time, I’ll either mix the raisins in with the apples at
the start or I’ll skip the final step of running the kuchen under the broiler
with extra sugar and butter on the top…or maybe I’ll do both. The raisins were a little too brûléed for my
tastes…they started off as golden raisins, but you can see in the picture what
happened to them under the broiler!
भिडियो हेर्न तलको बक्स भित्र क्लिक गर्नुहोस
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