Thomas Keller's Blueberry and Apple Kuchen
This is from Keller's book, The French Laundry. This is one of the few rustic dishes in the book. The original recipe uses cranberries, but I much prefer blueberries
Ingredients
Kuchen:
- 6 tbsp or 3 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus butter for the 9-inch cake pan
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 cup milk
- 3 medium Golden Delicious apples, thinly sliced (1/4 inch wedges)
- 1 cup cranberries or blueberries
- Cinnamon sugar: 1 tbsp sugar mixed with 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (or lavender, or cardamom)
Hot Cream Sauce:
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 8 tablespoons or 4 oz unsalted butter
Instructions
Kuchen
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Beat butter, sugar, and egg together in a mixer until the mixture is fluffy.
- Mix flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg in a big bowl
- Add the dry ingredients and milk alternatively to the mixer, and mix until all the ingredients are evenly combined.
- Mix the 1 tbsp sugar with your coice of cinnamon/lavender/cardamom and leave to infuse until needed.
- If using lavender leavers/flowers, remeber to remove before using!
- Cut the apples into very thin slices.
- I might not have produced the slices with the thickness desired in the book, but I think I did an okay job.
- Insert the apple slices into the batter (ends pointing towards the center so they kind of look like spokes on a wheel)
- Spread the blueberries/cranberries over the top of the cake
- Sprinkle the cinnamon/lavender/cardamom sugar all over the top of the cake
- Bake for 35-40 minutes
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes
- Remove from the pan and put on a plate
Hot Cream Sauce:
- Put the sugar, heavy cream and room-temperature butter into a small saucepan and heated it over low heat until the butter had melted
- Crank up the heat a bit to bring it to a boil
- After it has come to a boil, turn down the heat to a simmer for about 8 minutes, until it has thickened
Serving:
- When ready to serve, cut a slice and top with the cream sauce or ice cream
Notes
- The original recipe uses cranberries instead of blueberries
- I'm not a big cinnamon fan, so I might try this with lavender (put leaves flowers into sugar for a while before using), or maybe even cardamom
- This is probably good with pears too
- If you don't want to make the cream, just use vanilla ice cream instead - it won't suck