Apples on Apples

We are not known for luxurious deserts — it’s not our thing. We get too full to fast; we prefer savory salts, the occasional soft, ripe bloomy artisan French cheese, and hard after dinner liquors. We gorge on calories in other ways. But for the holidays, when the fruit cakes and weird chocolate logs start showing up on people’s tables, there are some far easier, awesome ways to serve festive vegan treats and get drunk at the same time. We’ve gotten obsessed with baking apples in apple beer.
The idea — not ours — came from our friend Molly’s grandfather who ran a Brooklyn deli for years and served baby apples baked with cherry cola inside. That grossed us out at first, then it turned us on: Why not slowly roast apples in a beer that already tastes like them, thereby fortifying them with more appleness as well as all the Belgian spice notes of a beer like Unibrou’s Ephemere? To “seal the deal” as it were, we came up with a coriander-spiked pastry crumble to bring out the coriander in the white winter beer. (And to listen to us walk you through the recipe, click here for our recent Good Food appearance.)

Beer Apples

(Serves 6)
6 Fuji apples
2 cups Ephemere apple-spiced beer
6 whole cloves
1/2 cup Earth Balance margarine
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 ground walnuts
1 tsp. coriander
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
fresh cilantro leaves for garnish
1. Pre-heat your over to 375 degrees.
2. Core your apples, twisting them out gently with an apple corer, and place them in a long, deep bread pan. They should sit snug so they don’t bob around. Pour 2 cups of beer, which is most of the bottle (just enough for a cup while cooking!), on top of the apples. You’ll want them two-thirds submerged. Put the pan in the oven to roast for about 45 minutes or until softened and starting to get blistery with a slight mushy look. The beer should be reduced by about half.
3. While your apples roast, whip up the simple pastry crust to top ‘em off. Mix softened vegan margarine in a bowl with equal parts flour and sugar and some finely chopped walnuts. Roughly crush the fresh coriander seed in a mortar and pestle and add to the mix. Using a fork push it around into a rustic crumble and finish it off by squeezing in your hands until evenly mixed.
4. Once the apples are ready, pull them out of the oven and stuff them (not too tight) with most of the pastry crumble. What’s left, sprinkle on top and let fall into the reducing beer goo. When you put the apples back in the oven for another 10-12 minutes the crumble will melt into a sugary syrup with the beer.
5. To serve, place one apple on a small desert plate. Spoon some extra beer syrup on the side and drizzled on top, and then garnish with one fresh green cilantro leaf.
Beverage: Unibrou’s Ephemere
Soundtrack: Silver Apples’ “I Have Known Love”