Apple crisp with Salted Caramel Gelato. Photo courtesy Talenti Gelato & Sorbetto.
Most people serve their apple pie or pecan pie à la mode with vanilla ice cream. That’s the classic, but we’ve always preferred Rum Raisin, a festive holiday flavor.
Yet some people like neither rum nor raisins. The emergence of Salt Caramel ice cream and gelato over the past few years has provided another perfect pairing with apple pie or apple crisp.
So today’s tip is: Serve Salted Caramel ice cream with your apple or pecan pie.
While salted caramels, the candy, have been made in France for hundreds of years, we thought Salted Caramel ice cream was a 21st century San Francisco phenomenon (we first had it at Bi-Rite Creamery there).
According to Graeter’s, the Cinncinnati-based ice cream emporium, their Salted Caramel flavor has been sold in Graeter’s stores for more than 100 years. Pints of it are now available in the premium ice cream freezer section at food stores across the country.
Talenti Gelato & Sorbetto suggests their Sea Salt Caramel Gelato with apple pie or apple crisp. Here’s their recipe:
RECIPE: APPLE CRISP WITH SEA SALT CARAMEL ICE CREAM
Ingredients For 4 Servings
6 medium tart apples, sliced
1-1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
1/4 cup butter, softened
2-1/4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice*
Salted Caramel Gelato
*PUMPKIN PIE SPICE RECIPE: Combine 4 tablespoons ground cinnamon, 4 teaspoons ground nutmeg, 4 teaspoons ground ginger and 3 teaspoons ground allspice. If you don’t need the 8 tablespoons this produces, cut it down accordingly: 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/3 teaspoons each nutmeg and ginger and 1/2 teaspoon allspice.
Waiting for some apple crisp. Photo courtesy Talenti.
Preparation
1. PREHEAT oven to 375°F. Grease an 8″x11″ pan with cooking spray or shortening.
2. TOSS apple slices with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Spread apples in pan.
3. STIR remaining ingredients together in a medium bowl; spread over apples.
4. BAKE for 30 minutes, until apples are golden brown and tender. Serve warm with a scoop of Sea Salt Caramel gelato or ice cream.
For more inspiration visit TalentiGelato.com.
If you’ve been hankering for one of Dominique Ansel’s famous Cronuts but are neither willing nor able to wait in line at 5 a.m., we can recommend an excellent subsitute: Jolie’s Kronies, made by a Bronx baker.
You don’t have to wait for them. You can order them by phone and send a messenger.
The original Cronut from Dominique Ansel Bakery is made in a small SoHo kitchen that can produce only 250 Cronuts a day. The national hype has lines wrapping around the block.
By contrast, Enrico’s Bakery, maker of Jolie’s Kronies, has a large facility and the capacity to make as many Kronies as the market demands.
The New York Daily News called the Kronie “life changing.” After eating a Boston Cream Kronie, we’d go so far as to say “It doesn’t get better than this.”
The appearance is simple; the flavor is heavenly. Photo of Boston Cream Kronie courtesy Sal’s Bakery.
Jolie’s Kronies are not a replica of the Cronut, but a different hybrid of a croissant and a cream doughnut.
The Cronut alternates layers of croissant dough and custard. Jolie’s Kronies are a filled donut: croissant dough with filling running through the middle (and given how good that vanilla custard is, we were happy to have a larger hit of it).
There is one flavor of Cronut; Kronies are made in Apple Crumb, Boston Cream (our favorite and closest to the Cronut), Chocolate Mousse, Dulce De Leche, Jelly Glazed, Maple Bacon, Nutella, Peanut Butter & Jelly, Pistachio, Pumpkin, Raspberry and Salted Caramel.
The Kronie was created by Joe Floriano and named by his five-year-old daughter, Jolie. So if you want a Cronut experience—or simply an incredibly good doughnut—contact Enrico’s Bakery: 1.914.723-0340 or enricospastry@gmail.com. The bakery is looking into shipping Kronies to those who can’t bet to the bakery. If you’re interested, email Joe to see if you can get a shipment. DISCOUNT IN MANHATTAN
There’s a Jolie’s Sweet Creations kiosk in the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park through January 5th. It’s just inside the 40th Street entrance (between 5th and 6th Avenues), by the carousel. They’ve offered a 25% discount any Wednesday if you mention THE NIBBLE. Kronies will be a hit at any holiday event. Yum, yum!
Happy Girl Kitchen is an artisan food producer in the San Francisco Bay area, making preserves and other condiments with organic farm fresh produce. The chutneys, jams, honeys, pickles and preserved tomatoes make delicious holliday gifts.
Next to their Mandarin Lemon Marmalade in the photo is a reindeer sculpture that’s fun to make at home.
Gather, wash and dry twigs for antlers and legs.
Attach a small lemon “head” to a large lemon “body” with three toothpicks. Orient the head so that the stem point serves as the “nose.”
Add the antlers and legs. You can use a toothpick or an ice pick to make small holes to insert the twigs.
For more fragrance, you can stud the body lemon (and the head, too) with whole cloves, or just use one clove for a tail. If you cover both lemons with cloves, they will preserve your lemon as a fragrant pomander.
Optional embellishment: tie a red ribbon around the neck.
Good nougat is hard to find. It can be a jawbreaker or cloyingly sweet. But is a Christmas tradition in numerous countries, and good nougat is worth hunting down.
For at least six generations, Maria Walley’s family has made torrone for Christmas and Easter (torrone, pronounced toe-ROE-nay, is Italian for nougat).
Her ancestors brought the recipe to America from Viterbo, Italy in 1910. It was made with almonds and hazelnuts and wrapped in pieces of wax paper with the ends twisted.
Maria has turned the family recipe into a commercial venture, Daelia’s Honey Nougat. She separates the flavors into your choice of Almond or Hazelnut.
The all-natural confection is made with egg whites, honey and nuts; the almonds come from California, the hazelnuts from Oregon. There is no corn syrup—an ingredient used by many nougat manufacturers that cheapens the flavor and texture.
Daelia’s Nougat in two delicious flavors: Almond and Hazelnut. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.
The bars of nougat are formed in wood molds, then cut by hand. A 3.53-ounce bar is $9.99 on Amazon.com:
It’s easy to make “fruitcake ice cream” Photo courtesy Vivolo.it.
This photo from Italian gelato maker Vivolo inspired a recipe idea:
Serve “fruitcake” ice cream/gelato for Christmas.
Start with vanilla ice cream. You can soften it and mix in the ingredients (and return to the freezer to harden), or simply top the ice cream, sundae style. Use:
Fruitcake ingredients—candied citron, cherries and pineapple
Shaved or chopped dark chocolate
Cubes of pound cake or actual fruitcake—tossed with rum or orange liqueur (e.g. Grand Marnier), if you like
Good fruitcake is a real treat. It has a bad reputation because of the many inexpensive, mass-marketed versions made from cheap ingredients that simply don’t taste good. The candied fruits are mediocre (or worse), the cake is mediocre, and no one wants to eat it.
But start with top ingredients, and you’ll have a hit—with very little effort.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ICE CREAM & GELATO
Pete Palazzolo, of Palazzolo’s Artisan Gelato & Sorbetto in Saugatuck, Michigan, sums it up: “Gelato is simply ice cream,” he states, “Ice cream the way it was before the American Industrial Revolution blew it full of air and artificially flavored it.”
In other words, gelato is:
More dense than ice cream.
Made with more milk than cream to better showcase the flavors (the more cream, the more fat coats the tongue and interfere with the flavors).
Bursting with natural ingredients—for example, actual puréed banana, not banana extract.
