Faux Apples - Waldorf

Waldorf Salad: Apples, Celery, Walnuts, Grapes in
a mayonnaise/whipped cream based dressing.  Kind of gross, right?  I'm not sure why I keep going back to it (besides my love for celery, maybe).  Well, we had a cool idea for a walnut/apple based technique and my mind went to Waldorf, I guess.

We make our own walnut "butter" (like peanut butter" in the blender with water, toasted walnuts, sugar and salt.  Once the butter is smooth, add more toasted walnuts, like chunky peanut butter.  Depending on the texture, you can form balls by hand or use a mold which is what we do.  Once the butter is rounded, put a stick in it and freeze it.  This is to make the center hard and easy to work with.

Once the centers are firm, we take an ounce of goat's cheese, form a thin disk by hand, like PlayDoh and wrap the center in it.

After the walnut centers are wrapped in goat's cheese, freeze them again, for ease of dipping. (Make sure you kind of shape the goat's cheese like an apple, which is harder than you might expect...apples are not very round)

We make our dipping gelee out of apple juice and freeze dried raspberries for color (easy to find at most Whole Foods)  The recipe is:

1.5 cups Apple Juice
1 tablespoon FD Raspberries (powdered)
2 tablespoons Sugar
5 sheets Gelatin.

We superfreeze the exterior of the goat's cheese with liquid nitrogen, but you could put it in a box with dry ice as well, it would just be slower.  This is what the process looks like:

money shot

The finished apples look a bit like this ->

It takes 5 dips to fully glaze them.

Afterwards, they have to be refrigerated 

until fully thawed, then the skewer

 can be removed and replaced 

with an herb sprig or leaf.

Convincing, aren't they?

At that point, we serve them with a relatively standard waldorf salad.  Our only additional flourishes include candied walnuts and a house made mayonnaise dressing.

Cool beans