Baked apple and cinnamon sorbet
Oven-baked reinette apple and a cinnamon infusion that replaces part of the water. It tastes of a winter dessert, but you eat it frozen.
The cinnamon does not go into the mix: you make a separate infusion, heating water with cinnamon to near boiling, and that flavoured water is what goes into the recipe. The flavour is there and the stick is out of the way.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·The baked apple, with the mix already cold. The cinnamon goes in as an infusion, not loose.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Mild and with the body of a compote, because the baked apple arrives already broken down and brings its own pectin. The cinnamon rises on tasting and the pinch of salt lifts the whole: it tastes more of a baked dessert than of a sorbet.
All about this baked apple and cinnamon sorbet
There are two preliminary preparations. The first is the cinnamon infusion: water heated with cinnamon to just short of boiling, then left to infuse. The second is the baked apples: russet at 180 °C for about 45 minutes, then skin and seeds removed to leave the pulp.
That pulp makes up almost half the sorbet. The sugars split between 21 DE glucose, sucrose and dextrose, with some inulin, to reach its sweetness and its solids.
The serving temperature stays in the upper part of the band: it is a firm sorbet, one that appreciates a few minutes out of the freezer. And the apple goes in once the syrup has cooled.
The ingredients and what each does
The fruit brings the flavour, the colour and much of the water in the mix. Sucrose and dextrose set the sweetness and the hardness at serving temperature. Glucose adds body and barely sweetens. Inulin adds solids with almost no sweetness, the job milk would do in an ice cream. The stabiliser holds the free water and stops crystals forming in the freezer. Water adjusts the concentration so the flavour is neither watery nor pasty.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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