Apple Charlotte, Unmolded (A Hot or Cold Dessert)
Source: www.cookstr.com/recipes/apple-charlotte-unmolded-a-hot-or-cold-dessert
Ingredients
- 6 lbs firm nonjuicy cooking apples (Golden Delicious are always reliable)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup dark rum
- 3 Tb butter
- 10 to 12 slices of homemade type white bread, 4 inches square and 1/4 inch thick
- 1 cup clarified butter
- 1/2 cup apricot preserves, forced through a sieve
- 3 Tb dark rum
- 2 Tb granulated sugar
- Optional: 2 cups creme anglaise (custard sauce) or 2 cups lightly whipped cream flavored with rum and powdered sugar
- A heavy-bottomed stainless or enameled pan 12 inches across
- A wooden spoon
- A 6-cup, fireproof, cylindrical mold about 3 1/2 inches high
- A pan
- A serving platter
Directions
- Quarter, peel, and core the apples.
- Slice them roughly into 1/8-inch pieces.
- You should have about 4 quarts.
- Place in pan, cover, and cook over very low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender.
- Uncover and beat in the apricot preserves, sugar, vanilla, rum, and butter.
- Raise heat and boil, stirring almost continuously until water content has all but evaporated20 minutes or more.
- The puree should be a very thick and fairly stiff paste which holds itself in a solid mass in the spoon.
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
- Remove crusts from the bread.
- Cut a square and 4 semicircles of bread to fit the bottom of the mold exactly.
- Saute to a very light golden color in 3 or 4 tablespoons of the clarified butter.
- Fit them into the bottom of the mold.
- Cut the rest of the bread into strips 1 1/4 inches wide.
- Dip in clarified butter and fit them, overlapping each other, around the inner circumference of the mold.
- Trim off protruding ends.
- Pack the apple puree into the mold, allowing it to form a dome about 3/4 inch high in the middle.
- (It will sink as it cools.)
- Cover with 4 or 5 butter-dipped bread strips.
- Pour any remaining clarified butter over the ends of the bread around the edges of the mold.
- Set in a pan (to catch butter drippings) and bake in middle level of preheated oven for about 30 minutes.
- Slip a knife between bread and sides of mold; if bread is golden brown, the charlotte is done.
- Remove from oven and cool for 15 minutes.
- Reverse the mold on a serving platter and lift the mold up a few inches to see if the sides of the dessert will hold.
- If there is any suggestion of collapse, lower the mold over the dessert again; it will firm up as it cools.
- Test after 5 minutes or so, until the mold can safely be removed.
- Boil the apricot, rum, and sugar until thick and sticky.
- Spread it over the charlotte.
- Serve the dessert hot, warm, or cold, with the optional sauce or cream.