I saw this amazing dessert from Julien Dugourd, a pastry chef at the two star Michelin Le Chèvre d'Or on instagram and was obsessed with attempting to replicate it somehow myself and Christmas family dinner seems to be the best occasion to try this out with shop bought ice cream as the backup plan if things go wrong.
I don't have the recipe to the dessert so this is my interpretation of it based on a single photo. I enjoyed all the flavours that went into it, although there are still quite a few tweaks I would like to make to the dessert next time in terms of proportion of each of the elements, I'm glad it was not too shabby for my first attempt.
Difficulty: Medium/Difficult
Time: No idea, I took my sweet time to do the different components over 2 days
Serves: 6
Ingredients
Sweet Shortcrust Pastry
- 135g butter
- 90g caster sugar
- 1 large egg
- 270g plain flour
Stewed Apple
- 2 Granny Smith apples diced to 3mm cubes
- squeeze of lemon juice
- pinch of cinnamon powder to taste
- caster sugar to taste
Chocolate Ganache
- 90g white chocolate
- 60g double cream
Roasted Hazelnut
- 1/3 cup hazelnut
Cream Diplomat
- 150ml whole milk
- tiny pinch of salt
- seeds from 1/2 vanilla pod
- 2 egg yolks
- 12g cornflour
- 37g caster sugar
- 450g double cream
Fresh Apple
- 2 Granny Smith apples
Tuille
- 50g egg white
- 25g butter
- 40g flour
- lemon zest
Method
Tart Shells
1. Put the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and mix it well together. Add the egg and beat until smooth and completely incorporated. Gently fold in the flour until just combined, being careful not to overwork the dough.
2. Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
3. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees (fan forced).
4. Roll out the dough into a sheet of about 2mm thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut out 6 circles with an 8mm perforated tart rings and place it inside the tart rings on a perforated baking tray. Reshape and re-roll out the dough if required into long strips of pastry, cut out 8 long strips the width of your tart rings. Gently line the inside wall of the tart rings and trim off excess pastry with a knife. Pierce the bottom of each tart with a fork few times.
5. Place the tarts inside the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Check after 10 minutes. It's cooked when it's lightly tanned. Let it cool and set aside once cooked.
Tuille
1. Lower the oven temperature to 150 degrees (fan forced).
2. Mix all the ingredients until it's well combined. Spread on top of your chosen stencil/mould. Cook at 150 degree fan-forced for 7-8 minutes. Take it out of the stencil/mould and set it aside to cool.
Stewed Apple
1. Add the diced apple, lemon juice, cinnamon powder, 2 tablespoons caster sugar in a small pot with 4 tbsp of water to start over medium heat. Bring it to boil and add 2 tablespoons of water each time until it evaporated till the apple is soft and started to break down. Add more sugar to taste if required. This should take about 20-30 minutes. Take it off the stove, let it cool and set aside.
Cream Diplomat
1. To make the cream patissiere, put the milk, salt, vanilla seeds in a heavy saucepan and bring it to boil over a low/medium heat.
2. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolk, cornflour and caster sugar in a mixing bowl with a balloon whisk. Slowly pour the hot milk into the egg mixture and whisk until fully combined and thickened.
3. Return the mixture into the saucepan over medium heat. Whisk constantly until cornflour is cooked out completely and the mixture has thickened and bubbling. Pour it into a container and cover it with a cling wrap touching the surface of the mixture, let it cool down and keep refrigerated.
4. When you are ready to assemble, whip the double cream until to the desired thickness and fold in the cream patissiere from the fridge to make cream diplomat and spoon it into a piping bag.
Roasted Hazelnut
1. Add the hazelnut to a small pan and roast it over medium low heat until golden.
2. Crush it lightly in a mortar and pestle, set aside.
White Chocolate Ganache
1. Melt the white chcolate with the double cream in a mixing bowl over a hot water bath until the white chocolate was fully melted and well mixed with the cream.
2. Let the ganache mixture cool down a little, spoon 2 tablespoons of ganache into each tart shell, rotate the tart shell until the ganache has evenly coated the inside of the tart shell. Add more ganache if you prefer. Let it cool.
Assemble
1. Sprinkle the crushed and roasted hazelnut onto the ganache mixture.
2. Spoon 1 tablespoon of the apple stew in the middle of each tart shell. Pipe the cream diplomat onto of the apple stew. Repeat until completed and keep it cold in the fridge.
3. Put some water with a tablespoon of lemon juice in a bowl. Use mandolin to thinly slice the fresh apples, and add it immediately to the lemon juice mixture to stop it from oxidising. Once the apple slices have softened slightly, take it out and dry it with kitchen paper towel and arrange them per the photo. Place a tart ring on top of the arrangement and trim off excess apples outside of the tart ring.
4. To finish, place the fresh sliced apples on top of the cream diplomat, and garnish with the tuille. Enjoy!