Mike van de Elzen: Hot apple cobbler with soft cream

Hot apple cobbler with soft cream 

Cook time: 5 minutes 

Prep time: 25 minutes 

Serves: 6

6 braeburn apples  

1/4 cup water  

1 tbsp honey  

1 teaspoon vanilla extract  

1/2 tsp cinnamon  

1 tbsp raw sugar  

3 tbsp lemon curd (optional)  

Cobbler topping  

1/2 cup milk  

1 egg  

250 gm plain flour  

1/2 cup raw sugar  

120 gm butter, cubed and chilled  

1 tsp baking powder  

1 tsp vanilla extract  

Pinch of salt  

250 ml cream, whipped to soft peaks

To prepare the cobbler topping, whisk together the milk and egg. Place the flour and sugar in a bowl and add the butter. Rub them between your fingers until the mixture starts to resemble breadcrumbs. Add in the baking powder, vanilla and salt and then slowly stir in the milk mixture until well combined - the mix will be a bit runny.  

Pre-heat a oven to 180*c fan-bake.  

To make the filling, peel and core the apples. Cut into large wedges and place into a medium pot with the water, honey, vanilla and cinnamon. Cook over a medium heat until all the liquid has evaporated.  

To assemble the cobbler, spoon the apple filling into a 22 cm round oven proof dish. Top with lemon curd if using and then the cobbler topping, leaving some gaps for the apple to rise up during the cooking. Sprinkle the extra tablespoon of sugar over the top.  

Bake for 40 minutes, then serve hot with soft cream. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
It is a time for our recipe of the Week
and we're joined by Mike vander Allison.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning, Good morning, Ah.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I love the fact that you've just kind of gone
on want it's just dragging on. I think we all
need a bit of a comfort dessert tonight and you've
come up with a goody.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Isn't that especially tonight? I think it's going to be
this maybe not up in Auckland, but Sydney down south,
It's going to be chilly.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Cold snappers rolling in, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
So what's better than a warm fire? Yeah, bowl of
ice cream and a delicious apple cobbler?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
What is a cobbler?

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Cobbler probably similar to a crumble, I would imagine kind
of first came about in America around the eighteenth century,
and it was because the European settlers came over with
their fruit pies. So I'm like this is these are quite nice.
I like these fruit pies. But because the American colonies,
they lacked the ingredients and the equipment they would you'd

(01:18):
often need to make a pie. So what they'll do
is they'll do the bass the same as the pie.
They put the fruit into the base, but instead of
putting puff pastry on top or going through that process,
they will just take like a rough biscuit dough and
they will just rip off this biscuit dough which was
easy to make, and just put like bits of broken

(01:39):
biscuit dough on top of the cobbler. And then they'll
fire that in the oven and when it came out,
the top became golden and uneven, giving it kind of
a cobbled appearance, hence the name cobbler.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
And does it matter what kind of apple, what type
of apple they.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Would use, Like the Americans, they love peach cobbler, which
I you know, you mentioned sweet on sweet, too sweet,
but I tend to go for tart like Grannysmith apples.
For this particular recipe, I'm using bray burns, which kind
of is a beautiful balance between the two. You can

(02:16):
also add like the lemon curd into your cobbler, like
you say, quite often in your fridge you might have
some lemon curd or some of that lime curd. Add
that in to add a little bit of tartness to
the cobbler, so it's not just sweet or sweet berries.
So I imagine like a kiwi will make an apple crumble.
You do the same thing, but the topping is slightly different.

(02:37):
So yeah, it's a good, good change.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Take a through it.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
So to prepare that the important part, which is the
cobbler topping, what you want to do is whist together.
I've got half a cup of milk which you want
to whist together with one egg. Just place at aside,
and then I've got two hundred and fifty grams of flour.
Mix half a cup of raw sugar with that into
a bowl, and then one hundred and twenty grams of

(03:02):
butter that's been chilled and cubed or you could grape
it into that flour. Then you get in there with
your hands and just mix, rub the butter through the
flour until it starts to resemble brea crumbs. At that
point there add in some baking powder, so it's a
teaspoon of baking powder. I've got some vanilla extract a

(03:22):
teaspoon of that, and a pinch of salt. Then you
take your milk and egg mixture and just slowly start
to add that in. Just working it with your hands
into it basically comes together into a wet dough. You
might get a spatcher in at that point. The end
result is the mix that is quite running, or it
might be a little bit running, which is no problems
at all. Set that aside, turn your oven one hundred

(03:45):
and eighty degrees fan bake, and then now it's time
to make the thill in itself. So I've got sex
brady and apples which I'm going to peel and I'm
going to cool, and I'm going to cut them into
large wedges and then fire them into a medium pot.
Over the top, I go caught a cup of water,
tablespoon of honey, teaspoon of vanilla, half teaspoon of cinnamon,

(04:07):
tablespoon of raw sugar, bring that up to the heat
over a medium heat, and cook that until basically all
your liquid has evaporated. Then take a twenty two centimeter
a round oven proof dish, add your apples into the bottom.
If you're going lemon curd, you could go lemon curd.
Just dribble like dollop some of that lemon curd over

(04:28):
the top of the apple. At that point, and then
we take our all important cobbler topping, and basically you
just kind of you fire the cobbler and leaving some
gaps in between so that you can see down into
the apple. And so what that does, as the apple
is baking, the juices of that apple will rise up
over the top or over the sides of that cobbler,

(04:49):
giving it that real sort of crunchy side and crunchiness
to the to the to the cobbler itself. And it
also kind of reduces the apple down and it all
becomes one and sticky and delicious. Sprinkle maybe a little
teaspoon of sugar over the top of that, and then
fire it into the oven. So one a see, that's
going to take about forty minutes. After forty minutes, pull

(05:10):
it out and serve that with some nice vanilla ice
cream or some soft cream and a nice capitie.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Sounds divine.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.