Let’s eat focaccia for pudding! This light as air bread base layered with fragrant raspberry and lemon curd, crisp apples and crunchy walnuts is a show-stopper. Never made curd before? It’s so easy and so much more delicious than anything you’ll buy in store. So get whisking and whizz up this dish for the people you love. They will love you even more after that first bite.
THE DOUGH
1 c warm water
2 t maple syrup
1 t yeast
Pinch salt
2 ½ c white flour, regular or gluten free
THE CURD
½ c sugar
⅓ c lemon juice
½ c frozen raspberries
Zest 1 lemon
1 egg, beaten
⅓ c room temp butter in chunks
THE FILLING
4 red apples
Juice 1 lemon
3 t white sugar
Zest one lemon
½ c toasted halved walnuts
2 T brown sugar
¾ t cinnamon powder
TO ASSEMBLE
2 T soft butter to grease pan
2 T melted butter to brush on top
A dusting of cinnamon and white sugar
METHOD
To make the dough mix all ingredients in a bowl except for one quarter of a cup of flour and leave to rise, covered in a warm place for 1 hour. It’s a sticky dough.
To make the curd simmer the sugar, lemon juice and raspberries for 5 minutes in a small pot. Take the pot off the heat and strain through a sieve.
Get your whisk in hand and pour one quarter of a cup of strained syrup into the beaten egg, whisking as you do it, then return whole mix to the pot and whisk constantly over low heat until it starts to thicken, about 2 mins. Add butter as you whisk, chunk by chunk, until the curd is thick and glossy. Pop in the fridge whilst you get on with the rest of the cook up.
To make the filling, slice apples into thin rounds. A mandolin is an excellent tool for this. Squeeze lemon juice over them as you go to prevent them from going too brown. It doesn’t matter if they brown a little. Mix in the white sugar and lemon zest.
Sprinkle bench top with the quarter of a cup of remaining flour and turn dough onto bench. Lightly mix the flour into the dough and form into a ball.
To assemble, grease your Ironclad Legacy Pan with the soft butter.
Place dough in middle of pan and turn it over so there is butter on both sides. Using your fingers, push through the dough to the bottom of the pan to form holes. This will create lovely airy focaccia. Press the dough up the sides of the pan. Then push any holes that are still obvious in the dough on the bottom of the pan together so that the curd doesn’t ooze through. Most of these holes will have naturally filled up as you press the dough into the sides of the pan.
Evenly spread 4 T of the raspberry lemon curd on top of the dough. Then sprinkle with walnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon. You’ll have a little left over curd that you can serve with the focaccia later on. Or eat on toast. Or just eat by the spoonful!
Lay the apple slices on top of the dough, starting at the outside edge and working into the middle. Brush the apples and dough edges with melted butter and finish with a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar.
Leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.
Heat oven to 225°C.
Bake for 15 – 20 minutes until puffed and golden. If the bottom of the crust is not quite as crunchy as the top, remove the pan from the oven and on a medium heat finish off browning the base on the stove top. Check often to make sure it’s not burning.
Slide focaccia onto a baking rack and leave to cool for 10 minutes to make cutting easier. Use a serrated edged knife to cut.
Dust with icing sugar. We ate this with vanilla coconut yoghurt and it was delicious!
