Apple & Vanilla Pastry Stack

Any dessert that has apples in it, I just love it. But I love it even more when my dear friend Kirsten Tibbles comes on to make me something yummy. What have you got for me today? Well, I thought we'd do a dessert. So I've got a honey phyllo, sautéed apple and custard dessert. Oh, sold. Straight away. So we've got some phyllo pastry here. We've cut it down, have we? So it'll fit the tray. Okay. I thought I would start with some butter and honey, which we're going to layer it with. And then if you can brush it on for me. Oh, I can. This is a nice idea. I usually just use butter only, but honey is just going to give it that lovely sweetness. You know, I add sugar where I can. Whether it's honey, brown sugar, white sugar. So we're just going to melt this together, which is quite simple. You can do it in the microwave or on the cooktop. I love being in the kitchen with you. Oh, me nothing. True. I mean, how long have we been doing this together? Maybe 15 years? We'll give away our age. Started when we were three. And I like to use this big brush. Yeah, it really does. That was fast. You know what I've actually seen done is people using, you know, getting one of those foam rollers as well. So if you're doing a lot of this, one of those foam rollers is actually a really fast way of doing it. So all the way to the end, like so. Now the sheet goes on. Lining that up. Perfect. Okay. I think I can manage that. I'm using both milk and cream because using the cream gives us a much creamier custard. And you wouldn't just use cream, would you? Not just cream, because it can split if you use just cream as much as I'd love to use all cream. A little bit of vanilla bean paste. You know, I love vanilla, so I'm not even going to measure that. Just a little dollop. Now heat that up and then separately in a bowl, we combine some sugar that goes in. With some eggs. And we actually call this a slurry, which I think is a building term. Do you know when I started my apprenticeship, I was told I had to crack eggs two at a time and do both hands. So crack here. Yep. And open them up. Oh, I dropped a bit of shell there. See? She's human after all. This is going to go in the oven now. How long do you want to cook that for? We're going to bake that 175 degrees Celsius for approximately 12 to 15 minutes. And you can have a little sneak peek at it and see that it's golden brown. But I bake it with a piece of baking paper on top and another tray. OK, here we go. Press that on. That's just going to make it super flat. Yes, I like it quite flat. So then we can focus on the custard and apple inside. Very nice. All right, cornstarch goes in next. And this is for like a thick custard. I guess it's going to be thick for something like this. It does. It does need a little bit of time in the fridge. But I prefer, rather than adding a lot of starch, to add a little bit of butter, which is in the cream, and then adding some extra butter. It gives you a better mouthfeel and consistency. This is boiled now. I'm going to pour that in. The milk, cream and vanilla. Whisk that together. It's always a good idea to pour this into the bowl first before transferring it back into the saucepan. OK, why is that? Otherwise, it can get too hot and you can get lumps in the custard. OK. So we have to boil it. As soon as it's boiled for a minute, transfer it to a bowl, adding your butter a piece at a time, plastic wrap on the surface, and it goes into the fridge for at least three hours. But you can make this a couple of days before. Nice. We're going to do the apples. If you can cut those into wedges, about 12 wedges each. OK. And I'm going to place some butter, sugar and a touch of cinnamon. We'll saute them off. Now, the beauty of these apples is they hold quite well. So you don't want apples that are going to disintegrate. But we want to add a lot of flavour. So you just pour it all into the pan. How good does that look? Smells so good. It does because of the honey there. Beautiful. All right, we'll just wait for our apples to finish cooking. And then I guess we can assemble. We can. All right, all our elements are ready to go. Favourite part. A little bit of this custard on the plate. Just as a little bit of glue, actually. OK. If you can give that a stir to soften it up. What I love about this is we can just simply break this into pieces. Beautiful and crunchy. Oh, that makes it easy. I thought you're going to bring out the ruler and cut it to perfection. That is pretty much lovely normally. So we just press that on. A good scoop of our custard goes on top. This custard just looks dreamy, doesn't it? And then apples on top. I love a dessert like this. It's attainable. It is. It's three steps, essentially. And a lot of it can be done ahead of time. Absolutely. Place this on. Then we dust it with some icing sugar. A little bit of a shake. So professional. They look like glass shards. Beautiful. Shall we dig in? Oh, that sounds good. I want to break the top off. Oh, custard and apple. I love those apples. And the custard. I mean, you can't lose with that, right? Nostalgia and classic flavours. She's just the best. Oh.