Once more driven by the latest National Day of, the Roediger House celebrated National Apple Strudel Day with a puff pastry strudel and the side highlight of homemade sweet milk ice cream. Some dessert ideas are better realized than others, and last Monday's effort looked like it was going to fall short of what I'd envisioned. My own primary misstep was in preparing the apple filling too late in the process; it was still way too warm when I wanted to spoon it onto the bed of chai-spiced sweetened cream cheese. The other dilemma, which made it all so much worse, was the puff pastry was entirely too sticky to work with. I didn't leave enough time to return it to the fridge to chill more. So: a flat, poorly-filled, leaky apple cream cheese strudel was the closest I could come to improperly celebrate the occasion. And you know what? It was actually kind of perfect! The apple filling settled into the chai-spiked sweet cream, even though some oozing led to some losing. The frothed egg white brushed on before baking proved an excellent adherent for a generous dusting of cinnamon sugar, sort of in the direction of a cinnamon crunch bagel topping. And then there was the fantastic vanilla sweet milk ice cream, making this a surprisingly excellent Monday night dessert. No need to be careful when this is the sort of treat you wish for.
Update: The following Friday night, I repeated this strudel recipe, with a fresh batch of the sweetened chai-spiced cream cheese and the other half of the cooked apple filling. I did cook the pastry longer than I should have, so the result was not as good for this second round...but the ice cream was even better because (in the meantime, between first and second strudel nights!) I'd made a new batch of dense, chewy, New England-style vanilla ice cream. That was quite the crowning touch!
Based on "Easy Apple Strudel with Puff Pastry," from Hyegyoung "Holly" K. Ford of BeyondKimchee.com. [Published 15 September 2021 / Updated 29 October 2023]
Apple Filling based on "Apple Turnovers," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 September 2022]
Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014]
"Sweet Milk Ice Cream," published in the King Arthur Flour catalogue some years ago, but no longer available on their website.
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