Apple Almond Baked Puddings with Toffee Sauce and Custard

How’s that for a recipe title? I was looking for something wonderful to make today for dessert and keeping in mind my whole British food theme for the year I thought I should turn to Rick Stein. Apples and almonds are always a wonderful combination, and since he promised the dessert would be easy to make and “delightful” to eat, I had to try this one. In keeping with this weekend’s recipe I took a picture of the apple blossom that just showed up on one of our apple trees, above.

This is actually out of his “French Odyssey” cookbook, but to me you may call it crème anglais, but it’s old fashioned English custard, first of all; and baked puddings with fruit, how much more British can you get? So sure, call it French if it pleases you. It is very easy to make although there are several steps. It took me half an hour to finish making everything, and then I had to wait another 20 minutes for the puddings to finish baking. And they are indeed delightful to eat.

Rick Stein’s Baked Apple and Almond Puddings with Crème Anglais

For the apples:

500 g dessert apples, such as Cox’s or Braeburn (four apples)

150 g unsalted butter

150 g light soft brown sugar

For the almond sponge:

175 g unsalted butter, softened

175 g caster sugar (white sugar)

3 medium eggs

100 g plain flour

100 g ground almonds

2 teaspoons baking powder

For the crème anglais: I didn’t make his recipe, so I won’t put it down, I always use Delia Smith’s because it’s cheaper since it calls for only three egg yolks and is more reliable with a spoonful of cornflour/ cornstarch. Use your own custard recipe here or don’t use any at all; the toffee sauce really is enough by itself. But the custard adds a whole other level of wow, you love me, you really love me, to this dessert. My sister Lauren is thinking right now that she’ll just use Bird’s powder. Sigh.

Six ramekins

Preheat the oven to 180C or 350F. Peel, core, and thickly slice the apples. Melt the butter and sugar together in a saucepan over low heat, add the apples and cook just until tender (about 5-7 minutes). Lift the apples out with a slotted spoon and divide them amongst the ramekins, then put a small spoonful of the sauce over the apples. (N.B. make sure you taste this sauce by itself– it tastes so good when the apples have cooked in it!). Set the rest of the sauce aside for later.

For the almond sponge, cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Add a little flour with the second egg to stop the mixture curdling. Sift over the rest of the flour with the baking powder and fold it in with the ground almonds. Divide the mixture between the dishes and lightly smooth the surfaces.

Bake 35-40 minutes (only 30 if you have a convection oven), covering them with a loose sheet of foil after 30 minutes if they are browning too quickly. They are done when the tops are spring back and an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Shortly before the puddings are ready, bring the reserved butter and sugar sauce to a rapid boil for 2 minutes until reduced to a rich toffee sauce.

To serve, run a round-bladed knife around the inside edge of the ramekins and invert the puddings on to warmed plates. Spoon some toffee sauce over and around the puddings and serve with the custard/ crème anglais.

By the way we had these cold with just the toffee sauce hot so it could be poured, and it was still very very good. But then I love fruit, almonds, cake, toffee sauce, and custard, so I was in heaven. And if you are thinking at me, you keep complaining about your weight but you eat these and put custard on it too, the only defense I have is– I used milk instead of cream in the custard sauce.

Rick Stein really is the most wonderful cookbook writer. He is one of my desert-island favorites. …Hey, there’s a new putting myself in a relaxed state of sleep game: what if I were shipwrecked on a desert island that had incredibly prolific plant and sea life? And like Swiss Family Robinson, a ship to scavenge for cooking tools before it finally sank? And I would have only the people I liked on the ship survive the wreck (can’t stand cooking for people I don’t like) and at least some of them would be a couple of tough men who would butcher the wild pigs and do the fishing for me so I could make these amazing meals…and now I’m starting to picture menus. OK, I know, I am officially completely weird.