Video Attempt: Baked Apples with Crème Anglaise

Just when you think we've put together a semi-normal cooking video...Matt goes missing. TO BE CONTINUED!

Baked Apples with Crème Anglaise via The River Cottage Family Cookbook

For the crème anglaise:

Makes enough for 6-8 apples

1 cup whole milk

1 cup half and half

Vanilla bean or vanilla extract

6 egg yolks

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

Pour the milk and cream into the saucepan and set it over medium heat. If you’re using a vanilla bean, slit it lengthwise and add it to the milk mixture. Stir from time to time until the milk starts to steam. Switch off the heat.

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl for about a minute, until they’re thick and pale. Pour the hot milk into the eggy mixture and whisk again gently for just a few seconds. Pour everything back into the saucepan and set over low heat. Stir all the time with the wooden spoon.

From time to time, lift the spoon out of the mixture and inspect the back. If the mixture runs straight off the spoon and leaves it quite clean, then you need to keep stirring. As the mixture gets hotter and hotter, it’s vital that you keep stirring. And make sure to keep the heat on low.

When the mixture coating the back of the spoon starts to look creamier, run your finger down the length of the spoon. If the line you make stays clear and distinct, the custard is ready.  Take it off the heat and stir it for another minute or two to encourage it to cool down. Stir in a teaspoon of vanilla extract if you’re using it instead of the vanilla bean.

Strain the custard through a sieve into a clean bowl. Pour over your apples once they’re ready!

For the baked apples:

Unsalted butter

Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apples, 1 per person

Soft brown or granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 350F. Smear a little butter over the inside of the baking dish you’re going to use. (You want your baking dish to be big enough that the apples fit in one layer with a tad bit of space in between.)

Carefully cut a line completely around the waist of each apple to give it sort of a thin belt. (This stops the apple from exploding as the flesh expands in the heat of the oven!)

Core the apples. (We actually had an apple corer, though I’m sure you could do this with a regular knife.) Either way, you want to be left with a cylindrical hole right through the middle of the apple. Cut a small slice off the bottom too so that it will sit in the baking dish without wobbling. Stand the apples in the dish slightly apart from each other, so they don’t join up while they cook.

Pour sugar into the well of each apple right up to the top. Dot a generous knob of butter on top of the sugar. Spoon a tablespoonful of water for each apple into the base of the dish.

Place the dish in the preheated oven and bake for about 30 minutes. The apples should be puffy and the skin a little split. (After 35 minutes, ours didn’t look very puffy nor the skin split, but almost the second we pulled them from the oven completely they did.)