Rustic French Apple Ginger Tart
I’ve been working on this dessert for one of my classes at school. It’s a student-run restaurant and I’m currently on the breads/ desserts station. I L.O.V.E. making bread! There’s something very satisfying about making something out of basically nothing. But anyways, back to the dessert.
So it’s getting colder here in Chicago so I thought that making something comforting and familiar would be nice for our guests. So my dessert is a Rustic French Apple Ginger Tart. I had to add the ginger to make it a LITTLE different. And I love the combination of flavors there- I think they work really well together.
Originally, I served it with some vanilla ice cream that we made, then changed the garnish to Bourbon whipped cream and now we’re back to vanilla ice cream again. Which reminds me, I need to make more creme anglaise aka Nectar of the Ice Cream Gods.
In the apple mixture is fresh ginger, lemon zest and juice, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves. I wanted to keep it very simple and let the flavors of the apples shine. The puff pastry was egg washed and sprinkled with sugar before baking and the vanilla ice cream is just the classic version. We topped it off with caramel sauce, freshly grated nutmeg and dried white chocolate powder (gotta love that molecular gastronomy)!
Underneath are thinly sliced Granny Smith Apples that I caramelized using some sugar and a blow torch. Any excuse to play with a blow torch, right!?!?
Here’s a picture of the dessert as we served it last week:
So, there’s a lot of room for improvement here. This week we’re going to cannelle some of the ice cream in advance, placing them on a frozen half sheet tray and storing them in the freezer (duh) until service. I think this will be a huge improvement over the melon baller technique we used last week. It was worth a shot, but didn’t quite work out the way we’d hoped. That’s half the fun of experimenting, though, figuring out what works and what doesn’t!
Also, the apples need to be moved out more, so that you can see them. And I think I’m going to try to dry them out a little in the oven before sprinkling them with sugar and turning the blow torch on them (Yay! Blow torch! Such a fun kitchen toy). 
Last week there was too much moisture in the apples to make caramelizing the sugar an easy task.
We also considered using the anti-griddle for the ice cream, but I’m not sure we can get the shape we want out of it. Perhaps I can get the creme anglaise into a nice disc shape and prop it up on the tart? This will require more experimentation, for sure. Which is fine with me because in my world the only thing more fun than the blow torch is the anti-griddle!
So, check back for an update of how these changes worked or didn’t work and I’ll be sure to post a picture of the final product.
