The little town I am from in New York was surrounded by apple orchards, and apple picking was a yearly family activity. We would pick bushels upon bushels of apples, and store them in our garage over the winter. Fresh pressed cider was a staple in our house all fall; as soon as the leaves started to turn and the weather got cool, we would drive past the orchard on the way home and wait anxiously for the fresh pressed cider sign to go up at Kelly’s. On Sunday mornings my mom would wake up early to get a gallon of cider and fresh made cinnamon sugar doughnuts from the farm market. Apples and apple cider are still one of my most favorite parts of fall and both work together so well in this sorbet; it tastes like a slice of apple.
The apples, cider and vanilla smelled amazing when baking; the entire house smelled absolutely fantastic.
This is really quite delicious by itself, but a buttery shortbread cookie, or a vanilla butter cookie of sorts to go along with it would send this over the top. It was really good with softly whipped cream too.
Baked Apple Sorbet
Adapted, barely from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams 1 1/2 cups unfiltered apple cider 6 medium tart apples (or 1 1/2 lbs), like Granny Smith peeled, cored and quartered 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1/4 cup light corn syrup 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon 1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped and bean reservedPre-heat oven to 350°F.
Mix all ingredients together, even the vanilla bean, in a 9×13 baking dish and toss to combine. Loosely cover with foil, and bake for 20 minutes or until apples are tender; I found that my apples took a lot longer to bake, more around 45 minutes, but I used 4 giant apples, cut into smaller pieces, instead of the 6 medium-sized apples that the recipe called for. Remove apples from the oven. Discard vanilla bean and let cool.
Process apples in two batches in a food processor; they should be well processed and completely smooth. Force the puree through a sieve into a large bowl (pick one large enough so it can double as an ice bath when you are done). Pour strained apples into a gallon size Ziploc bag; I did have a small portion of apple left in the sieve that I could not get to go through. Rinse out bowl, and fill with ice and water. Submerge sealed Ziploc in ice bath until cold; about 30 minutes.
Pour sorbet into ice cream maker and freeze until it has the consistency of very softly whipped cream or a tick smoothy. In her book Jeni says that it is key that you don’t over mix your sorbet, because it will add in too much air to the mixture and give it a fluffy/crumbly texture, which is a very good tip. Transfer frozen sorbet to an airtight container, and top with a sheet of parchment or waxed paper and freeze for at least four hours prior to serving.
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