Baked South Tyrolean Apples with marzipan and warm custard

Heat the oven to 200 degrees (conventional setting). Peel the apples and remove the core. Fill the hollow in each apple with lemon juice, raw marzipan (around 10 g per apple), cinnamon, sugar, lemon peel, a little Grappa (alternatively, use rum or beer) and a small piece of butter (around 1 tablespoon’s worth).

Place the apples on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper. Bake the apples in the pre-heated oven at 170–180 degrees for about 30 minutes.

For the custard, combine the milk with the vanilla pulp (scraped out of the vanilla pod), sugar, grated lemon peel and salt in a saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil. Separate the egg yolks from the whites, take the saucepan off the heat and slowly stir the yolks into the mass. Pour the mixture into a bowl and leave it to cool. Thicken a little water with the corn flour in another small bowl, then stir it into the milk and egg mixture. Heat the mass until it is very nearly boiling, stirring constantly, so that it becomes completely smooth. Leave it to cool. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

Once the apples are baked, take them out of the oven and arrange them on dessert plates with a small bowl of warm custard.