Applestroop & Apple Pie Blondie

We have our youngest son to thank for this recipe, he enjoys cooking and experimenting with new flavours and cookery styles. This recipe is firmly based in continental cookery.

The applestroop is basically a spicy apple butter which originates from Belgium and the Netherlands. This is a highly concentrated apple sauce which is made traditionally by long, slow cooking of the apples, or in this case the apple juice. Eventually it caramelises and turns brown. It is tart, fruity and spicy and absolutely delicious, it can be used on pancakes, spread on bread, it’s good with cheese and you can even use it on roast pork. I’ve included my son’s recipe for making the applestroop, though you can buy it online.

A streusel is a crumbly topping made of flour, butter and sugar, although you can also add oats, spices and chopped nuts. This is used to top muffins, breads, and cakes, it can also be ribboned through cakes. This originates from Germany, and as you’ve probably noticed it’s not unlike our crumble topping.

This streusel has the added twist in that it is made with brown butter, or beurre noisette, which as you may have noticed is a French ingredient. This is a butter which has been cooked long enough to turn the milk solids present in the butter brown while cooking out any water that may be present in the butter. This gives the butter a toasted nutty flavour and it has a richer and more intense flavour than melted or clarified butter. It can be used in sweet or savoury dishes, and once made can be stored in a jar and kept in the fridge. Traditionally this is made with unsalted butter. Be careful though, there’s a fine line between caramelised and burnt, you want the solids to become brown not black.

How to Brown Your Butter

To brown your butter, allow it to come to room temperature, cut it into pieces, roughly equally sized. Put the butter into a pan, preferably a light coloured one so you can see when the butter becomes brown. Place on a medium heat and stir to move the butter around. Once the butter it melted it will begin to foam and sizzle at the edges, this is the water evaporating off.

Keep stirring for about 5-10 minutes depending on how much butter you’ve used. The butter will begin to turn golden brown and the foam will begin to subside. You will notice that the butter will gradually become brown and begin to smell nutty. Once this happens remove from the heat and pour into a heatproof bowl. It is important that you don’t leave the butter on the hob as it can quickly burn, also that once it has become nutty you remove it from the pan, the residual heat in the bottom of the pan could be enough to burn it. This isn’t difficult to make, but it does need to be watched constantly, so don’t leave it to do something else, and if you have to leave it make sure you take it off the heat.   

Left: Cooked Butter Right: Browned Butter

It may see like a lot of work, but these appley spicy blondies are well worth making, they are really delicious. If you like you can put a handful of chopped nuts, for example pecans and walnuts, into your streusel, or add a small handful or oats, which will add another dimension and texture.

Making the Appelstroop

Ingredients
  • 110 g sugar
  • 8 cloves
  • ¼ tsp nutmeg
  • 2 star anise
  • 1 small vanilla pod
  • 1 cinnamon stick (2 cm)
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 ½ lt apple juice
Method

Start the day before you are going to cook the marmalade. 

  1. Place all the apple juice, lemon juice and spices in a large saucepan.
  1. Bring to a boil and simmer until the juice is ¼ of the original volume, then remove the spices.
  1. Add in the sugar.
  1. Bring back to the boil, stirring all the time. Reduce to a simmer.
  1. Once the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, decant it into a sterilised jar.

Making the Apple Pie Blondies with Brown Butter Streusel

Struesel Ingredients
  • 60 g salted butter
  • 70 g dark brown sugar
  • ¼ tsp mixed spice
  • 75 g plain flour
Struesel Method

Brown the butter by placing in a frying pan and cooking until the butter solids turn brown. (See the notes above about brown butter). Once this has happened put the rest of the ingredients in the pan. Mix this until it resembles wet sand, remove from the heat and set aside.

Blondie Ingredients
  • 1 large cooking apple (eg, Bramley)
  • 250 g plain flour
  • ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 150 g salted butter
  • 200 g light brown sugar
  • 100 g dark brown sugar
  • 120 g granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 tbsp Appelstroop
Blondie Method
  1. Set the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4.
  2. Grease and line a 22 cm square brownie tin.
  3. Peel and core the apple. Cut one half into small chunks and the other into fine slices. Place the sliced apple in water with a little lemon juice.
  4. Cook the apple chunks with 1 tsp of sugar in a saucepan until soft, set aside.
  5. Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spice in a large bowl. Set aside.
  6. Mix the sugars in another bowl, brown the butter and add to the sugars, mix well. Allow to cool slightly and then add the egg and vanilla extract.
  7. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry until combined but be careful not to over mix.
  8. Fold in the cooked apple. Put this mixture into the prepared tin.
  9. Drizzle the appelstroop onto the top of the mixture and place the sliced apple on the top.
  1. Top with the streusel mixture and bake for 50 minutes.