Candy Critic Dessert Club – Our First Experiment - Apple Pie Pizza

Today represents our first ever experimental dessert. I have a few references for this creation (namely I've looked up a few apple pie filling recipes), but for the most part I'm winging this. The prep for this recipe is probably the most time consuming, and it should be done well ahead of time.

Ingredients

3 Apples (peeled and sliced into small pieces)
2 tables spoons lemon juice
2 cups of water
1 cup of brown sugar
1/8 cups of corn starch
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of grated cheddar cheese
Pizza dough (make your own or buy it, it's up to you)

For prep you have to make pie filling, and to make the apple pie filling you first have to prep your apples.  Peel your apples, take out the core, and quarter them.  Then slice your quarters into fairly thin slices.  As you cut your apples put them in a bowl with the lemon juice and mix them around.  This will keep your apples from going too brown. You can skip the lemon if you like, but it makes the apples more presentable.

When the apples are done, put your two cups of water on the stove and turn on the stove to start the boil.  Immediately (before the water boils), ad the brown sugar, corn starch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt.  Stir this mixture together constantly over the heat.  It should boil fairly quickly and then immediately it should start to thicken up.  When it's just starting to thicken up, take it off the heat and ad the apples.  Put the pot back on the heat and stir it around until it warms up again. Then turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 5 minutes (or until the apples are just getting a little soft).

If you want you can cook these apples until they're completely soft, but for the pizza it's nice to have a little apple crunch.  Once the apple are done, remove them from the heat and pour them into a bowl. Let the apples cool a bit, and either store them for later, or use once cool.  While you're waiting for the apples to cool, you can grate your cheddar cheese, how much cheese you use depends on your taste.  Some people don't really like the idea of cheddar cheese on an apple pie, so you might even want to skip this step entirely.  If you love cheddar cheese on your apple pie, go for the whole cup, if not just lightly sprinkle it on.

Once your toppings are ready, you just have to choose how you want to bake it.  I suggest baking the crust slightly before putting on the ingredients.  In this case it was decided to bake the pizza on the BBQ (a great way to bake pizza I might ad).  Roll out the dough if need be, then put it in the oven or on the barbecue until it's fairly cooked.  Once after it's cooked, put on the apple pie filling, and sprinkle on the cheese. Return the pizza to the oven/BBQ until it's warmed up and the cheese has melted.  Since all the ingredients are cooked already, there's no need to worry about cooking anything you just have to warm things up.  Once the cheese is melted, remove from the over, cut and serve warm.

This recipe worked out fairly well.  I did however have to drain some of the juice from the pie filling before adding it to the pizza.  What I suggest, is put the filling on the pizza dough with a slotted spoon, then if the pizza seems dry, just poor on the extra liquid from the topping as needed.  The cheese was a pleasant surprise, I didn't know if it would work, but it did.  The cheese added just a nice amount of savory to the sweet pie filling. I went with a little less cheese, mostly because I was sharing this pizza with friends and some weren't adventurous foodies. The filling made enough for at least two pizzas, since it stores well, I froze the second half.  Dessert pizzas aren't a hit with everybody, but the group that ate this one seemed pretty pleased.

CC

British Adventures, The Candy Critic's Travel Guide

Last week I posted the first entry in our three part series about a recent trip to Europe.  Part one was all about the French leg of our journey, full of pastries, crepes, and Disney stuff.  Today I'm going to write about the British leg of our journey.  Most of this journey took place in England, however we did spend one day in Wales, that provided us with an interesting sweet surprise.

This was by no means our first trip to the UK, in fact the UK tends to be a regular stop for us whenever we travel in Europe.  It might just be a stop over with a day or two in London, or it could be a grand adventure through the British countryside.  This particular trip was more about the grand road trip, and we managed to stop in a few places both in the north and in the south west.

The thing that always appeals to me when I travel to the UK is the fact that the treats are fairly recognizable.  Some British sweets and foods are very common in Canada, so when I travel to the UK it gives us a little taste of home.  Treats that aren't available in Canada are still fairly comfortable to our palettes.  I'm rarely shocked by any British foods, but instead I'm filled with a certain feeling of comfort.  The other great thing about the British palette is their love of sweets and pub food, two of my favorite things.

This trip started out at a friend of ours' wedding.  The great thing about this friend (and his family), is they have the traditional British love of sweets.  The dessert table at this wedding was filled with all kinds of amazing treats, many of them were even homemade.  I could go one for hours about how much I loved this food, but that's not really fair to you since many of treats aren't available to you unless you're friendly with a local British family.  I'll tell you this much, the meringues were fantastic.

The second part of our British experience was all about driving around exploring the countryside.  Food wise the two themes seemed to be cheese and Scones with clotted cream.  In some cases we were lucky enough to experience both at the same time.  One of our great stops was in the beautiful city of Cheddar.  There I learned that real cheddar is not about being orange, but instead it's about being aged in the caves of the Cheddar Gorge.  It's not only a beautiful place naturally, but there are plenty of places in the area to have a cheese sandwich (made with real cheddar) and some scones with clotted cream.

Our obsession with clotted cream comes from a past experience we had in Scotland where we sampled the best scones with clotted cream we've ever had in our entire lives.  It came from a fairly unlikely place, a cafeteria on the shores of Loch Ness.  Since then, every time we go out in the UK countryside, we always get a craving for scones with clotted cream.  This was no different, and I'm sure we managed to fill our cravings at least 6 or 7 times on this journey.

While Cheddar is a great all around place to enjoy some British food in a beautiful setting, on our second day we visited a large ice cream shop in a town with a really strange name, Mumbles, in Wales.  The place has a very simple name "Joe's", but it serves up what might be the best vanilla ice cream I've ever had in my entire life.  If you're not convinced by one Candy Critic's opinion, just check out the Tripadvisor page for this ice cream place.  You can ask just about anybody in the town what to visit, and before they suggest the seaside, or the castle, they'll ask if you've had ice cream at Joe's yet.

If you go, I recommend getting the plain vanilla, if you want you can ad some sprinkles or nuts, but don't go for the flavours.  It's not that the flavours are bad that I know of, it's just the vanilla is so good.  It's smooth, creamy, and has a beautiful texture.  This was one of the best food finds of this trip, and I can't recommend it any more.  After eating Cheddar in Cheddar, and with a belly filled with Joe's ice cream, we headed to London.  London is always a great place for anybody with a sweet tooth, however it's not really perfect.

I've noticed a trend in London of these places selling import candy, most of which is American, Canadian, and Australian.  While I love the fact that they're exposing candies from around the world to the folks in the UK, I do have a beef with their prices and policies.  The shop above in particular is a prime example of this problem.  When I went into this shop I found that the only person to even look my direction was the large security guard.  Most of the staff was either wondering or too busy to talk to anybody.  The prices were extremely high (I can kind of accept that because of shipping costs), but they had many policies about buying a minimal number of each candy.  When I travel I like to sample small amounts of each candy, but this place refused to sell me a candy that I was interested in and told me I had to buy a minimum of 4.  I don't mind big candy stores, and I accept the price increase because of the imports, but I don't accept stupid policies, and I hate it when I find local candies in these stores at jacked up prices (to get the tourists).  Worst of all, the woman I spoke to (who I assume was the manager or owner) was very rude to me, and wore a constant scowl.  There, rant over.

So I don't end this post on a bad note, I wanted to share with you guys something I noticed on one of the Tube trains in London.  It appears that the chair cover design, may have been inspired by one of the UKs more famous candies, Licorice Allsorts. You be the judge.

CC