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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, December 12, 2007

TASTE
It's easy to bake restaurant-style desserts at home

 •  It's a piece of cake

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

JEFF WIDENER | The Honolulu Advertiser

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Though Cherilyn Chun can layer puff pastry with the best of them, at Cassis by Chef Mavro, she keeps the desserts a bit more simple, in keeping with the casual bistro theme of the Bethel Street restaurant.

A signature dessert there, for example, is a distant cousin of the tarte tatin. The classic is an apple pie, baked with the crust on top, then turned out so that the crust becomes the bottom and the caramelized fruit is displayed. Chun's dramatic take on the idea towers high and is drizzled with an aromatic crimson sauce. But at heart, it's just a baked apple with some cookies and ice cream.

The dish requires four distinct recipes, but the home cook can use store-bought versions of three out of the four components, Chun said.

LI-HING APPLE TARTE TATIN

  • 5 peeled, cored sweet-tart cooking apples

  • 1/2 cup butter

  • 1/2 cup brown sugar

  • Juice of 1 lemon

  • 2 tablespoons li-hing powder

  • 10 sugar cookies (store-bought or homemade vanilla sables; recipe follows)

  • Vanilla ice cream (five scoops)

  • Caramelized ginger, minced

  • Apple chips (commercial dried apple slices or homemade; recipe follows)

    Place peeled and cored apples in a pot or oven-proof casserole or baking dish. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add brown sugar, lemon juice and li-hing powder, stir and simmer briefly, until bubbling and thickened. Pour this syrup over the apples, turning to coat. Bake at 250 degrees, turning and coating apples every 15 to 20 minutes of 45 minutes to 1 hour. While the apples cook, place a pint of good quality vanilla ice cream in the refrigerator for half an hour, to soften slightly. Turn the ice cream out into a bowl and cut in a good quantity of minced crystallized ginger — perhaps 2 tablespoons. Pack into tub or other container and freeze.

    Apples are done when they are fork-tender and soft but not falling apart. With a serving spoon, remove each apple from the syrup, allowing excess syrup to drip off. Reserve syrup for use in dessert. Place each apple in the well of a standard-size, straight-sided muffin tin, pressing with back of spoon to flatten and shape; cool. The apple will become a squared-off cylinder. Apples may be held in the refrigerator until use.

    To assemble the dessert: In the center of a flat plate, place a round sugar cookie. Top this with the apple. Drizzle one-fifth of the syrup over and around the apple. Top with another cookie. Carefully place a scoop of ginger ice cream on top of the cookie. Cut a notch in the top of the ice cream and place an apple chip upright in the top of the ice cream. Serve immediately.

    Makes 5 servings.

  • Per serving: 700 calories, 35 g fat, 19 g saturated fat, 120 mg cholesterol, 600 mg sodium, 94 g carbohydrate, 3 g fiber, 65 g sugar, 6 g protein

    VANILLA SABLES (SUGAR COOKIES)

  • 1/2 cup sugar

  • 1 cup butter, slightly softened

  • 1 egg

  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour

    In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Briefly beat in egg and vanilla. Beat in flour, mixing until just incorporated. Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap, shaping into a thick rectangle. Chill at least 1 hour or overnight.

    Preheat oven to 325 degrees. On a lightly floured board, roll out dough to 1/8 inch and cut into rounds. Bake until golden brown, about 10 to 15 minutes.

    Makes about 12 to 24 cookies.

  • Per cookie (at 12 cookies): 140 calories, 8 g fat, 5 g saturated fat, 30 mg cholesterol, 55 mg sodium, 16 g carbohydrate, no fiber, 4 g sugar, 2 g protein

    APPLE CHIPS

  • 3 cups water

  • 1 cup sugar

  • 1 vanilla bean, split

  • Very thinly sliced unpeeled sweet-tart cooking apples

    Bring water and sugar to a simmer and add the scraped-out seeds of the vanilla bean. Add apples to syrup and cook until translucent, a few minutes.

    Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Drain and carefully place apples individually in rows on a baking pan lined with nonstick baking mat or cooking parchment. Dry in oven until chewy-crisp — about an hour.

  • Per chip: 35 calories, no fat, no saturated fat, no cholesterol, no sodium, 9 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 8 g sugar, no protein

    Another homey dessert that Chun prepared in a previous job is perfect for large holiday parties or office potlucks. These rich and tender pineapple-nut bars, more cakelike in texture than cookielike, were a buffet standard at the Waialae Country Club when Chun worked there. This a very easy and forgiving recipe. If you melt the butter and throw all the ingredients in together at once, it will have a coarser, but still moist texture. Standard cake procedure — creaming the room-temperature butter with the sugar, adding eggs one at a time and slowly beating in flour mixture and fruit — produces a finer crumb.

    Chun specifies finely chopped but not ground nuts and roughly chopped pineapple chunks rather than crushed. Be sure to drain the pineapple well. Other drained, chopped canned fruit might be substituted. And, of course, the bars would be great served warm with ice cream.

    This makes a LOT, perfect for parties.

    PINEAPPLE-NUT CAKE BARS

  • Oil and flour baking spray or butter and flour for preparing pans

  • 3 cups flour

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

  • 2 cups (8 ounces) roasted plain macadamia nuts, finely chopped

  • 1 cup butter

  • 4 cups sugar

  • 8 eggs

  • 2 cans pineapple chunks, well-drained, chopped

    Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

    Spray or grease and flour a 12-by-17-inch jelly roll pan (shallow, rimmed pan). Set aside.

    In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking soda; stir in macadamia nuts. Set aside.

    Melt butter (or just soften). In bowl or standing mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Gradually add flour-nut mixture. Stir in chopped pine-apple.

    Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Place on center shelf of preheated oven. Bake until golden brown, edges pull away slightly from pan, center springs back when gently pressed with a finger and toothpick inserted into the center emerges clean.

    Cool on rack and cut into 40 larger squares or 80 thick fingers.

  • Per serving (larger squares): 220 calories, 10 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 55 mg cholesterol, 140 mg sodium, 30 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 22 g sugar, 3 g protein

    Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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