Caramel Apple: One Bite

At long last, I'm getting around to putting this blog together. It's been a long time coming and I'm delighted that you've decided to stop by. I intend to regularly update you on my food-related experiments and ideas in this space. So...without further ado.

People who've eaten stuff I make know that I'm a big fan of combining flavors. Sometimes it's to try something new (i.e., bubble gum tarts with chocolate crust, or Indian kebab-style beef patties with grilled fruit and coconut-curry sorbet). Sometimes it's to put a new spin on an old classic. This week's experiment falls firmly in the latter category.

Few things beat fresh, crisp apples in the fall. And few things complement the sweet-yet-still-a-bit-tart taste of a great apple like a rich dose of caramel. In addition to being delicious, this pairing reminds me of after-school trips to the Franklin Cider Mill when I was a kid. That was my motivation here.

In essence, I wanted to put a contemporary spin on this pairing, and to capture it in a single, intense bite. In this regard I'm inspired a bit by Toronto's Claudio Aprile (Colborne Lane), who is a master of the single-bite explosion of related flavors.

The result is quite simple: an apple sphere set atop a bed of dry caramel, served in an Asian soup spoon.

The apple spheres were based on an online recipe from Ferran Adria (El Bulli). I juiced a few Cortland apples (in a juice extractor), mixed the juice (1 C or so) with some sodium alginate (1/2 tsp) in the blender, and then heated this to boiling. Then I poured this into silicone half-sphere molds (1") and froze. After letting these freeze, I dropped them (gently) into a heated mixture of water (2 C) and calcium chloride (1/2 tsp), rinsed, and set aside (you can see them in the not-so-great picture).


The dry caramel is directly from Grant Achatz's Alinea cookbook. Corn syrup, sugar, cream and butter cooked to 230 degrees, left to harden on a Silpat, and then blended with tapioca maltodextrin in the food processor.

I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out. If I made them again, I'd consider intensifying the apple a little bit (possibly by boiling down the juice and/or including some ginger or sugar). I also don't love that the caramel flavor doesn't hit the tastebuds until after the apple is mostly gone. I think that's because of the maltodextrin; not sure how I'd get around that. They were also a bit tricky in that the spheres are really delicate. More than one was burst by the caramel powder.