Sweet Little Crumbling Mini-Cakes
29 January 2008
I noticed that I am somewhat lagging behind in terms of dessert recipes on my website, compared to the amount of savoury dishes I have already posted. So although I am not that much of a dessert person I decided to create a nice little sweet dish for our Sunday evening dinner, to follow a light starter of some marinated sautéed mushrooms. Cookie monster Simon was not particularly sad about this plan.
Very much according to my taste I used a lot of almonds of different shapes (grated, as slivers and in liquid form, aka amaretto). As a fruity base I took apples, which I always have at home during this season. Mingling everything together with two eggs and a few further ingredients - and ready was the base, which I baked in small soufflé dishes. Very quick and easy.
I wanted to serve the mini-cakes hot, which makes it more difficult to properly turn them out of the cast than if you let them cool down first. I still opted in favour of the better taste and smell of the warm version at the risk of getting little crumbling mountains rather than upright cakes. As a matter of fact I had to cheat a bit, filling the gaps in the cakes with the bits remaining in the soufflé dishes, so the result did not look all that bad in the end.
But the icing on the cake, literally, was Simon’s idea to have some vanilla ice cream with the hot cakes. I can just say: very yummy!
Hot Apple and Almond Crumble Cakies
| serves 6 |
| 2 firm, mid-sized apples |
| 160g grated almonds |
| 4 egg yolks |
| 3-4 packages of vanilla sugar |
| grated zest and juice of 1 lemon |
| 6 tablespoons of almond slivers (sticks) |
| 4 tablespoons of raisins |
| 60ml amaretto |
| a pinch of salt |
vanilla ice cream |
| some more almond slivers for decoration |
| some butter and bread crumbs
for the soufflé dishes |
Pre-heat the oven at 200°C and prepare 6 little soufflé dishes. First butter them, then evenly coat them with some bread crumbs.
Peel the apples, quarter them to remove the core and process them through a coarse grater. Add the grated lemon zest, the lemon juice as well as the amaretto and put the mixture aside.
Whisk the egg yolks and the vanilla sugar until foamy, holding the bowl over a pot of steaming water. Add the grated almonds, the almond slivers, the raisins as well as a pinch of salt (and some more sugar if you wish) and stir well. Finally stir in the apples and fill the mixture into the prepared soufflé dishes. Bake them in the oven for about 25 minutes; they should be slightly browned on the top.
Let the cakies cool down for a few minutes after taking them out of the oven. Once you can just about touch them without burning your fingers, cautiously loosen them from the soufflé dishes at the sides with a knife and turn them out onto dessert plates. If the bottom of the cake keeps sticking to the cast, take out the missing bits with a spoon and use them to fill the gaps in the cake, which should work well as the base is juicy and soft.
Serve the mini-cakes warm and garnish each one with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. To decorate sprinkle a few lightly roasted almond slivers on top.