Boskoop in Nightgown

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Featuring my favorite baking apple as the star of a classic. Only the guests arrived early, so it was not yet properly dressed (With Ingredient Special on Boskoop Apples, Rcp# 49)

Ingredients for ‘Boskoop in Nightgown’

  • Recipe and ingredients for the base of [‘The Cake’], omitting the cocoa and carob bean gum, adding a knife tip of cinnamon instead.
  • 2 Boskoop apples (or any other large baking apple)
  • Nuts and dried fruit to taste (about 6-7 tablespoons, cleaned/peeled, crushed and chopped, I used unsalted pistachios,walnuts and dates)
  • Canola oil for greasing the baking dish
  • Your favorite sauce, yogurt or ice cream to go with the baked apple (vanilla, maple walnut, black currant…)

You will also need: two porcelain or stoneware dishes large enough to hold two apple halves, plus a little room around them. Remember to remove the rack from the oven before turning on the heat. These molds usually do not respond well to being placed on a hot rack when they are cold (they may crack).

Cooking Instructions ‘Boskoop in Nightgown’

  1. Prepare the dough for the cake base, replacing only the cocoa and carob bean gum with a knife tip of cinnamon. Leave the dough in the refrigerator for at least half an hour. It must be cool to handle later.
  2. Wash and halve the apples. Remove the core and stem.
  3. Remove the cold baking grid from the oven. Grease the two tins with canola oil. Preheat the oven to 175°C (fan assisted).
  4. Work the dough carefully and form four portions from it the size of an apricot. Wrap the peel side of each apple half with a layer of dough, closing holes and cracks in the ‘nightgown’.
  5. Put two ‘dressed’ apple halves, dough side down, in a baking dish. Place the rack in the middle of the oven and immediately place the two forms on the rack. Bake for 20-25 minutes (dough should be slightly browned and firm to the touch), then carefully remove the hot forms (very hot, use heat-resistant baking gloves) and place them on a suitable surface.
  6. Carefully turn the apples so that the bare fruit is facing up (use spatula). Place the crushed and chopped dried fruit and nuts between the apples. Return the pans to the oven and bake for another 8- 10 minutes.
  7. Remove the pans from the oven. Place each apple half on a dessert plate and garnish with the toasted nuts and fruit. Serve with your choice of sauce, yogurt or ice cream. We prefer the classic: either a nice vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream (both plant-based in our case).

Makes 4 servings

Side Notes:

  1. This recipe was inspired by my grandmother. I once asked her to explain a cartoon to me. In it, the artist had taken the name of a recipe very literally. I did not get the joke at the time, so she gave me another example of a strangely named recipe that was really begging to be made fun of. It involved an ingredient wrapped in dough, which resulted in the attribute “…in nightgown”. We both had a good laugh at the idea of dressing everything and everyone in nightgowns (mostly floral at the time), and it kind of stuck. She also had a Boskoop tree in her backyard that she was very fond of (wonderful fruit, see [‘Chubby Cheeked Nobility’]). So here’s a recipe dedicated to you, Grandma: ‘Boskoop in Nightgown’.
  2. Yes, the opening lines are a bit silly. But it was inspired by a childhood joke, so you’ll have to forgive me 😉
  3. You can make more dough than you need for this recipe. Because you can actually freeze and thaw it (in the refrigerator). And use it to make [The Cake’], for example.

Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.