Tag Archives: Apple galette

Savoury Apple Galette with Caramelized Shallots and Brown Butter Pastry Crust

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I still had a few of these beautiful Lucy Rose apples in the fridge after creating this Kale and Apple Salad so I decided to bake a savoury apple galette this week. I paired the apples with caramelized shallots and Gruyere and Fontina cheese. This galette is in the running for the best thing I’ve baked this year. Honeycrisp apples are a perfect substitute if you can’t find Lucy Rose apples. They are elusive. It took me 5 years to find them in Ottawa.

I’ve really been into baking with brown butter lately, so I made a brown butter pastry crust, using a fantastic recipe from King Arthur baking. Brown butter is the secret sauce of baked goods. It amplifies all the flavours. It adds depth, richness and a nutty caramel flavour. Browning butter is not difficult, but you do need to allow some time to brown and then chill it, before making the dough.

Butter is composed of butterfat, milk protein and water. When you brown butter, you are essentially toasting the milk protein. As you heat the butter, and it begins to bubble and sputter away, the water evaporates and the hot butterfat begins to cook the milk solids, turning them from creamy yellow to a splendid speckled brown colour and your whole kitchen smells like toasted hazelnuts. It’s insanely gorgeous!

For the savoury part of the galette, I chose shallots. I prefer their more delicate flavour to onions. Caramelizing the shallots takes time and patience. Turn the heat to medium low and don’t rush it. If the shallots start getting too brown before they are tender, splash in about 1/4 cup of water to slow things down. Choose a good melting cheese. Cheddar, gruyere, or fontina are all good choices.

Watch how it all comes together.

Once the galette comes out of the oven, brush the apples with some warmed apricot or apple jelly, for shine and a hit of extra sweetness. The galette is delicious warm or at room temperature. Buttery flaky crust gives way to salty gooey cheese, savoury shallots and sweet apples. It’s the perfect balance of flavour and texture. Brushing the crust with dijon gives a bit of a tang to help balance out the sweetness of the apples.

Click here to print recipe for Savoury Apple Galette with Caramelized Shallots and Brown Butter Pastry.

Ombre Apple-Honey Galette

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If you were at the Smiths Falls YIG (Your Independent Grocer) last week, and saw a masked woman pawing through every apple bin, looking for perfect specimens in every colour of the rainbow, that was me. I apologize for getting my germs over every apple!

I realize that August is a bit early to start posting about fall apples, but Rosh Hashanah is in two weeks and we’ve got to get our ass in gear. I’m not a fan of traditional honey cake. I find it too cloyingly sweet. I wanted to find a way of incorporating both apples and honey into a dessert.

Apples and honey go together on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), like cookies and milk, every other day of the year! We dip apples in honey to symbolizes our wishes for a sweet year for family, friends and all the Jewish people. While this explanation makes sense, I have often wondered why specifically apples and honey?  Why not figs dipped into date syrup?

In researching this question, the interpretation I discovered on the website torah.org, resonated quite strongly with me.Their insight regarding the apple part of the equation, is explained this way:
“On most fruit trees the leaves appear before the fruit, thus providing a protective cover for the young fruit. The apple, however, makes a preemptive move by appearing before the leaves. The Jewish people are compared to an apple because we are willing to live out our Jewish lives even if this seems to leave us unprotected. “

The choice of honey was brilliantly explained with this insight:
“A bee can inflict pain by its sting, yet it also produces delicious honey.  Life has this same duality of potential. We pray that our choices will result in a sweet year.”

And so apples and honey it is again, this year on my holiday table.

You’ll need 5 different varieties of apples if you want to make the Rainbow/Ombre effect I produced here. You’ll need two of each kind of apple. Look for dark red apples, pink apples, red-orange apples, yellow apples and green apples. A very sharp paring knife and about 20 minutes of concentration and you will be ready to assemble.

I used my favourite galette dough as the base. Impossibly flaky and delicious it is a versatile dough. I mixed some ground almonds, honey, egg and flour to make a honey paste (frangipane) as the base for the apples. The dough is folded up around the apples in a very casual way. Nothing precious here. Sprinkle it all with some cinnamon sugar and then into a hot oven.

The colours do fade a bit when baked, but the taste is so delicious. I brushed it with a honey glaze when it was still warm, for extra shine.

A scoop of vanilla ice cream would be very welcome.

Or just plain with a cup of coffee or tea.

Click here to print recipe for Ombre-Apple-Honey-GaletteDownload

Apple Galette with Pecan Cheddar Crust

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Think of a galette as the pie’s younger, free-spirited cousin. Pie, is by definition, baked and served in a sloped sided dish. Galettes are totally freeform, no pan, fancy adornments or crimping necessary. Think of a pie as the undergarment equivalent of wearing Spanx. The pie plate holds everything in. Galettes are infinitely more comfortable and easier to make!

The goal of both pies and galettes is a flaky crust. I experimented with adding pistachios to my galette crust this summer. This time I added pecans and cheddar and the results were outstanding. The nuts add a beautiful colour and flavour to the crust and the cheese adds additional fat which leads to extreme flakiness- a good thing in a galette, not so good if you’re human.

In developing this recipe, I made quite a few galettes to get things perfect. The leftovers were sliced, wrapped and frozen for my husband’s nighttime snack habit. I was shocked at how crispy and flaky the crust stayed, even without reheating.

In keeping with our carefree vibe, I left the apples unpeeled. You want to use a smaller apple for this galette. I found some small organic Honeycrisp apples. Pink Lady, Fuji and Granny Smith would also be good choices.



In the video, I used a plate to cut a perfect circle, because I’m not as laid back as I wish I were! Feel free to leave the edges irregular if that’s more your style.

Click here to print recipe for Apple Galette with Pecan Cheddar CrustDownload