My husband Tom and a group of his wine friends have organized an annual event they call "Muscaday" -- it consists of everyone bringing Muscadet wines to our house and gorging on excessive amounts of assorted shellfish catered from Blacksalt. Last year, I was out of town on Muscaday -- no real loss for me, since I don't drink wine. But this year, I was here, and I wanted to make some desserts that would be fitting for the occasion. At first I thought I should make a tarte tatin, since the dessert originated in the Loire Valley and Muscadet is a Loire Valley wine. But then I thought that tarte tatin seems like a fall dessert that should be made at the peak of apple season.
Still, I had apples on my mind, and I decided to check another recipe off of my to-bake list: a Caramelized-Apple Gateau Basque. It might be from the wrong region, but at least Granny Smith apples are consistent all year long. And the photo looked just like a Gâteau Breton (a cake I love -- see here, or here), but with apple filling inside.
In retrospect, it's quite a coincidence that I happened to serve both the Buttermilk Carrot Cake with Spiced Caramel and this Gateau Basque at the same event -- because both of them involve cooking fruit in caramel before adding it into a cake. The Gateau Basque is basically diced caramelized apples wrapped inside a buttery pastry.
You make the pastry in a mixer from softened butter, orange zest, sugar, eggs, salt, baking powder, and flour. I divided the dough in two and chilled it overnight. For the filling, you dry burn sugar, add vanilla bean seeds and butter, and then stir in diced apples. The recipe says to cook the apples for about 30 minutes, until the apples are soft and caramel colored and have absorbed the caramel sauce. I took this to mean that the apples would absorb all of the caramel, but I cooked the apples for a long time, and it wasn't going to happen. However, the apples were definitely soft (but not mushy) and caramel colored by the time I was through, and they were also translucent.
You roll out one half of the chilled dough and use it to line a buttered pan; the recipe says to use a springform pan, but I used a cheesecake pan with a removable bottom. Even though the dough had been chilled overnight, it was soft and difficult to work with. You fill the bottom crust with the cooled caramel apple filling, and cover it with the remaining rolled-out dough. I did my best to neatly pinch together and seal the top crust to the bottom; because the dough was soft, I was able to use my finger to nicely smooth out the seams. Then I brushed the dough with egg yolk, scored the top of the cake with a fork, and put it in the oven to bake.
The cake came out beautifully golden, with the lovely score marks from the fork still clearly visible -- it was a fantastic looking gateau. Then I tried to serve it. Although I was able to easily remove the sides of my cake pan with the removable bottom, I could not slip the gateau off of the pan base. I served it directly from the base, and the bottom crust was just stuck. In the photo above, you can't see any crust underneath the apple filling. That's because there wasn't any -- it was left behind and stuck to the pan bottom.
Still, the apple filling was well enough behaved that it kept its shape and I could fake it and serve what looked like intact slices of cake. I was not a fan. The pastry was buttery and delicious, and the orange zest gave it a nice, bright flavor. But the filling -- I thought that it was cloyingly sweet to the point where it was overwhelming. I did serve it with whipped crème fraîche, and that helped cut the sweetness. The gelato that my cousin ran out to buy was also a good accompaniment. But I just couldn't enjoy eating the gateau plain.
The dessert was enjoyed by our Muscaday attendees, but between the problems with the stuck bottom crust and the sweetness of the filling, this is not a cake I'm going to be making again -- there are other apple-caramel desserts that I like much better.
Recipe: "Caramelized-Apple Gateau Basque," from the October 19, 2005 Los Angeles Times.
Previous Posts:
Still, I had apples on my mind, and I decided to check another recipe off of my to-bake list: a Caramelized-Apple Gateau Basque. It might be from the wrong region, but at least Granny Smith apples are consistent all year long. And the photo looked just like a Gâteau Breton (a cake I love -- see here, or here), but with apple filling inside.
In retrospect, it's quite a coincidence that I happened to serve both the Buttermilk Carrot Cake with Spiced Caramel and this Gateau Basque at the same event -- because both of them involve cooking fruit in caramel before adding it into a cake. The Gateau Basque is basically diced caramelized apples wrapped inside a buttery pastry.
You make the pastry in a mixer from softened butter, orange zest, sugar, eggs, salt, baking powder, and flour. I divided the dough in two and chilled it overnight. For the filling, you dry burn sugar, add vanilla bean seeds and butter, and then stir in diced apples. The recipe says to cook the apples for about 30 minutes, until the apples are soft and caramel colored and have absorbed the caramel sauce. I took this to mean that the apples would absorb all of the caramel, but I cooked the apples for a long time, and it wasn't going to happen. However, the apples were definitely soft (but not mushy) and caramel colored by the time I was through, and they were also translucent.
You roll out one half of the chilled dough and use it to line a buttered pan; the recipe says to use a springform pan, but I used a cheesecake pan with a removable bottom. Even though the dough had been chilled overnight, it was soft and difficult to work with. You fill the bottom crust with the cooled caramel apple filling, and cover it with the remaining rolled-out dough. I did my best to neatly pinch together and seal the top crust to the bottom; because the dough was soft, I was able to use my finger to nicely smooth out the seams. Then I brushed the dough with egg yolk, scored the top of the cake with a fork, and put it in the oven to bake.
Still, the apple filling was well enough behaved that it kept its shape and I could fake it and serve what looked like intact slices of cake. I was not a fan. The pastry was buttery and delicious, and the orange zest gave it a nice, bright flavor. But the filling -- I thought that it was cloyingly sweet to the point where it was overwhelming. I did serve it with whipped crème fraîche, and that helped cut the sweetness. The gelato that my cousin ran out to buy was also a good accompaniment. But I just couldn't enjoy eating the gateau plain.
The dessert was enjoyed by our Muscaday attendees, but between the problems with the stuck bottom crust and the sweetness of the filling, this is not a cake I'm going to be making again -- there are other apple-caramel desserts that I like much better.
Recipe: "Caramelized-Apple Gateau Basque," from the October 19, 2005 Los Angeles Times.
Previous Posts:
- "Little Tart, Huge Flavor: Caramel Apple Tartlettes," October 10, 2013.
- "Last But Not Least: Apple Tart with Caramel Sauce," October 29, 2012.
- "Wait for It: Gâteau Breton," April 30, 2014.
- "Stoked to Have Yolks: Hazelnut Gâteau Breton," September 21, 2012.
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