Baked Apples with Cinnamon Custard Sauce Recipe

The holiday season is a perfect time to try LearnToCook.com’s Baked Apples With Cinnamon Custard Sauce!

Baked Apples with Cinnamon Custard Sauce
Serves 8

Ingredients:
8 each apples
1 each lemon, for juice and zest
4 oz. unsalted butter, softened
½ cup brown or maple sugar, plus more for the top
½ cup hazelnuts or pecans, toasted and finely chopped
dried fruits – raisins, currants, cherries, cranberries
ground cinnamon
2 cups liquid (water, apple cider, sherry, maple syrup, etc.)

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. With a Parisienne scoop core the apples leaving the bottom half inch intact. Peel the top third of the apples and rubbed the peeled portion with half a lemon to prevent browning.
2. Mix the butter, sugar, nuts, dried fruit and lemon zest and fill the apples with this mixture. Place the apples into a baking dish so that they fit snugly, sprinkle with extra sugar mixed with a little ground cinnamon.
3. Pour your choice of liquids into the bottom of the dish to a depth of at least ¼ inch. Cover loosely with foil and bake until the apples are soft to the touch, about 30 minutes to an hour. Baste a couple of times while they are baking.

Cinnamon Custard Sauce

Ingredients:
3 each egg yolks (or 3 medium)
¼ cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1 tbsp.cinnamon stick, broken (or ½ tsp. ground cinnamon)
1 cup half & half
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Method:
1. In a small sauce pan, heat the milk or half & half with half of the sugar and the cinnamon just to a scald. Meanwhile whisk the yolks with the remaining sugar and a pinch of salt just to dissolve the sugar.
2. Set up an iced water bath containing a small metal bowl with a strainer. When the milk is hot, gradually whisk into the egg yolks (temper). Return the custard mixture to the pot, and cook over medium heat while stirring constantly until the sauce thickens, but do not let it simmer or boil!
3. Immediately pour the custard through the strainer into the bowl in the iced water bath. Add the vanilla and continue to stir the custard to speed its cooling. Serve cold with the warm baked apples.

Recipe Courtesy of Escoffier School of Culinary Arts