Baked Apples With Caramel Mousse

Well, this lovely dessert is being posted just in time for Valentine's Day to be over. Serve it for your Oscar party...if you have one of those, or President's Day. Serve it for President's Day. Regardless of when you serve it, I'm guessing people will like this twist on the caramel apple because it is awesome. I served it VD night (Valentine's Day, because the other interpretation of that would be DISASTROUS) and the girlpren finished hers before I could even register that she was eating it. That sounds somewhat unflattering unless I mention that she's a slow eater.

I tried various apples with this recipe, and found that Fuji work the best. The Granny Smith was good, but the flavor of the wine didn't come through. Yes, there is wine in this. You could skip the wine and use a brown sugar/honey mixture, but then you don't get to say, "Oh, I already opened a bottle of wine. I might as well drink the rest so it doesn't spoil." Honey never spoils. Besides, who drinks a bottle of honey? Weirdo.

This recipe is kind of a pain in the ass, as you have to cook things, then let them cool so you can assemble everything. If the apples are hot, then the mousse will melt. If the caramel sauce is hot then the whipped cream will melt and the mousse won't form. The best way to make this is apples, then sauce, then mousse, then assemble, then eat. Don't try the last one first.

BAKED APPLES WITH CARAMEL MOUSSE

4 Fuji Apples ($1.69 for 3 lbs.)
12 oz. sweet wine ($9.99 for the Auslese or Icewine)
1 cup brown sugar ($1.69 for 32 oz.)
1/2 stick plus 1 tbsp (5 tbsp.) unsalted butter ($1.69 for 16 oz)
1/2 cup half and half ($1.59 for 32 oz.)
1 cup chilled heavy cream ($1.99 for 1 pint)
pinch of confectioners sugar ($1.29 for 32 oz.)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Core the apples by scooping the core out from the top of the apple. Do not cut all the way through the apple to remove the core. You will be creating a shot glass sized cavity in the apple. Then shave the skin off the top of the apple about 1 inch down the apple.

Sprinkle a bit of brown sugar into each of the apple cavities and add 1/2 a tbsp of the butter. Fill the cavities with the wine. Place the apples in a small shallow baking dish and pour the rest of the wine in the dish. You want the liquid to cover the bottom of the dish and come up on the apples a bit. If you don't have enough liquid you can mix some water in. The rest of that wine is for drinking.

Place the apples in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour basting the tops of the apples every 15 minutes. The apples will start to brown on the top when done.

While the apples are baking away, you can make the caramel sauce. The recipe I use isn't an actual caramel sauce, it's more of a brown sugar sauce, but it's easy to make, tastes like caramel, and I can't think of a third thing. First, make sure you have brown sugar. I didn't. If you don't have brown sugar it is easy to make. First take 1 cup of sugar, and pour it into a mixing bowl. Then add 1 1/2 tbsp of molasses. Work them together with a fork until no more molasses chunks remain and the sugar is an even brown color. Freshest brown sugar you will ever have. If you don't have any molasses, go to the store and pick some up. While you're there, get some brown sugar. Oh, and do this before you bake the apples or you run the risk of starting a citywide fire.

Combine the remaining brown sugar, butter, and half and half in a small sauce pan over medium heat. heat and whisk or stir constantly for 5-7 minutes and you are done. Let the sauce cool to room temperature.

When the apples are done, take them out of the oven, dump the liquid in the apples, and put them into the fridge. It'll take a while for them to cool. Say about 1 and 1/2 hours. I waited several hours, so I'm making that time up. If you are making theses in a hurry I would say, "Really?" And you could put them in the freezer I guess, but don't let them freeze.

Once the apples and caramel sauce are cool, whip the heavy cream on high after adding a pinch of confectioners sugar. When you get firm peaks pour in about 4 tbsp of the caramel sauce and fold it in to the whipped cream. You do not need a lot of caramel to flavor the mousse. if you want it sweeter, add more caramel, if not, add less. If you work the cream too much it will deflate. You can have streaks of caramel in the mousse, it's OK.

Now put the mousse in a piping bag, or, if you don't have a piping bag like the majority of us who aren't pastry chefs, a zip top bag. Cut the corner of the zip top bag off and you have yourself a disposable pastry bag. Take that mother earth! Pipe the mouse into the apples, then heat up the rest of the sauce and pour over the apples for presentation.

You will have leftover mousse and sauce, but this is not the kind of problem to complain about. People will be impressed that you made caramel mousse, and you can respond with things like, "Yes, you are right to be impressed." and "That's right, what have you ever done with your life?" It just drives the point home a little more. Now if you will excuse me, I have to buy copious amounts of discount Valentine's Day candy.

Sweet and Spicy Potato Chip Nachos

You know who doesn't have enough nacho dishes? The Amish. They are constantly asking me to post nacho recipes on the blog. They are also constantly asking me what a blog is. And by constantly, I mean that I may have never met an Amish person. Lot's of Mennonites, though.

Enough about the cultural bankruptcy that is the Amish lifestyle, we're hear to discuss nachos. Crispy chips, melted cheese, and often an assortment of meats and peppers and creams and beans and other meats piled so high that the bottom of the nacho dish begins to liquify from intense heat and pressure, ensuring that the chips are no longer crispy. At least that is what I assume happens.

The other week I was at a restaurant that had a potato chip nacho plate with blue cheese. It. Was. Awesome. Their dish used truffle oil on the chips, which is wonderful, but something I do not have. I tweaked the dish until I made something that made me start eating it, suddenly look down to find there was no more, and become very sad.

SWEET AND SPICY POTATO CHIP NACHOS:

2 Lbs. Russet potatoes sliced 1/4 inch thick (10 Lbs. for $1.99)
3 Tbsp. Extra virgin olive oil (17 oz. for $3.29)
1 Tbsp. Red pepper flake (3.75 oz. for $0.99)
1 Tbsp. Paprika (3.75 oz. for $0.99)
1 tsp. Hot sauce (17 oz. for $0.99)
Sea Salt ($1.49 per grinder)
Pepper ($1.49 per grinder)
Brown sugar (32 oz. for $1.49)
Blue cheese (5 oz. for $2.99)

Set oven to 400 degrees. Clean or peel the potatoes as is your preference. Slice them into 1/4 inch slices. If you do not have a mandolin, this will be a pain in the ass.

Once sliced, put them in a bowl of water with enough water to cover them. Combine the oil, pepper flake, paprika, and hot sauce in a bowl where you can fit all the potato slices. Salt and pepper to taste. Take the potatoes out of the water and pat them dry then throw them into the bowl and coat them well.

Place the slices on baking sheets and put them into the oven rotating the top sheet to the bottom after about 15 minutes. It should take 30-40 minutes for the chips to finish, but watch them. If your chips are not all uniform some will be done quicker than others. If you see a chip that's done (browned around the edges) remove it with tongs and set them on a rack to dry.

Dry the chips about 5 minutes. Add salt and brown sugar to taste. Now build the nachos by setting down a layer of chips and topping it with a layer of sprinkled blue cheese. keep going until you have enough. Turn on the broiler of your oven and put the nachos right beneath it. Remove when the cheese is melty and delicious looking. If you oven doesn't have a broiler just put the nachos in the still hot oven and watch to make sure the chips don't start burning.

I was very pleased with this concoction. It's like WASP nachos. Serve these at the country club and they may consider you for membership. Maybe. Probably not.

Hot Candied Bacon

So, I hopped on Pinterest after being absent from the internets for a time, and I found something amazing, and by amazing I mean important to absolutely no one but me. Aldi is following my board for this blog. Megan immediately indicated that it probably wasn't really Aldi, as Dwight Schrute is apparently following her. In truth it isn't Aldi, but the PR company ALDI US has hired to run their Pinterest board (Weber Shandwick). This excites me. Not because I believe that Aldi will somehow sponsor me or become involved in any way (seriously, have you read this blog?), but because I can picture the PR folks coming to this blog, finding it amusing, then realizing they can never tell their client about it.

It's been about a week, so I expect the cease and desist letter anytime now.

I've also been told I do not blog enough. It's true I've been posting about once a month for the past two months, but I promise to post more. I have a whole bunch of microwave based posts coming up, and even bumped into someone who wants to guest post. I am so on the ball that I managed to not get any of her contact information. Yeah.

Anyway, how do you follow up two posts about eggs? A post about bacon. Megan calls bacon "meat candy" for good reason, because it is everything that is awesome about meat. It's crispy and it melts in your mouth. We use bacon to make great meats taste even better. Bacon is the official meat of your mom, it was also the first meat in space, and is so good it is now considered vegetarian by PETA. These are all facts that you should in no way attempt to verify. Facts.

HOT CANDIED BACON:

8 slices of thick cut bacon ($5.69 for 24 oz.)
1 cup brown sugar ($1.49 for 32 oz.)
1/4 cup hot sauce ($0.99 for 17 oz.)

Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with foil. Fill a bowl with the hot sauce and another bowl with the sugar. If you have metal racks that fit on the baking sheet, I find that those are very useful. If you don't, use a broiler pan.

Take a slice of bacon and dip it in the hot sauce until it is fully coated. Lift the bacon and allow the excess to drain back into the bowl. Now put the bacon into the brown sugar and coat the strip of bacon with it. Now place the strip of bacon on the rack or broiler pan. Keep doing this until you run out of space for the bacon. Sprinkle any excess sugar over the bacon. If there isn't any excess sugar, the excess sugar is in the bag marked "brown sugar." Put the bacon in the oven and let it cook for 20-25 minutes or until done to your desired doneness.

 I used the thick cut bacon, but you can use thin if you like. Maple flavored bacon is great for this recipe. Once the bacon has cooled a bit (it will crisp up as it cools) use some kitchen shears to cut the bacon into bite size pieces. We put this out at parties, and it tends to disappear. The spicy and the sweet mixed with the salty and that it's bacon makes this one of our favorite snacks. Megan was extremely happy as I tried to get the recipe for this right, because we had a lot of sugared bacon around the house. This puts most people in a good mood. That's it. Now go make bacon.