Charlotte made from apples and rye bread (Russian dessert)

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lean
vegetarian

This dessert, made from crumbs of stale bread with the insides of berries or apples , is quite often found in various cookbooks of the pre-revolutionary period. Moreover, the creators call it differently every time: in the British style - pudding, in Russian - pie-sugarnik, and in the book by Lena Molokhovets, published in 1866 , this dessert is called in French - charlotte.

Ingredients

a little ground cinnamon to taste
apples	3 pcs
sweet white wine (can be replaced with orange or lemon juice)	30 ml
sugar (to taste)	30-50 g + 1 tbsp. for frying crumbs
stale rye bread (but not dry)	300 g
vegetable oil	2-3 tbsp.
at least some jam or preserves for serving

general information

Complexity

Easy

Kitchen

Step-by-step recipe with photos

There are quite a lot of options for making such a “charlotte”: with wheat bread or with rye, a whole huge “pie” or in portions, a quick version - with the addition of eggs or milk in a layer of crumbs, or a lean version - only with vegetable oil, the most wet dessert - with bread crumbs soaked in syrup or juice, or the driest - with crispy crumbs.

I made a Lenten version using crispy fried rye bread crumbs that mix with apples in an unusual way. The dessert, despite its simplicity, turns out to be very, very tasty.

Preparation:
Peel the apples, cut them into small cubes or thin small slices.
Simmer apples in a frying pan with wine or juice, cinnamon and sugar for 2-4 minutes, stirring, over high heat.

Grind the bread into crumbs with a blender and fry with 1 tbsp. sugar in vegetable oil (the crumbs should become crispiest).

Place in a greased pan (or better yet, in small portion pans) in layers - crumbs, then apples and crumbs again. Perfectly compacted.

Bake at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes (the crumbs will lightly brown on top).
Cool. When serving, you can very carefully remove the charlottes from the molds, but you don’t have to remove them, serve directly into them, lightly pouring jam syrup or jam on top.

Crispy rye crumbs and juicy apples are mind-blowingly delicious.

*If all the liquid does not evaporate from the apples during stewing in a frying pan and you add it to the charlotte, then it will be the most moisturized and will crumble less.
If you do not add apple juice, the charlotte will be the crispiest and most crumbly. This is exactly what I came up with: very tasty, but in the process of eating the wonderful “cake” lost its shape.

White bread charlotte

Charlotte made from snow-white bread and apples is a classic, although it is rarely prepared.

Charlotte bread

For production, it is imperative to use stale bread or a loaf. When using a soft crumb, the charlotte comes out sticky, dense and poorly baked.

In order for the “dough” to have a uniform thickness, the crusts from the bread must be cut off.

For charlotte it is better to use sour apples. They impart a pleasant sourness to the product and bake perfectly and quickly.

This charlotte is prepared quickly and eaten just as quickly!

There are many recipes for charlottes. Try making charlotte with apple roses or charlotte with whipped cream.

Ingredients

Sour apples (Antonovka variety) – 350 g
Wheat bread – 300 g
Milk – 200 ml
Testicles – 2 pcs.
Granulated sugar – 70 g
Butter – 40 g
Ground cinnamon – 7 g
Breadcrumbs – 30 g
Sweet powder – 20 g

How to make charlotte from snow-white bread

Cut stale wheat bread or loaf without crusts into small cubes.

Combine milk, sugar and eggs.

Mix the mixture well until smooth.

Place the bread cubes into the milk-egg mixture.

Mix everything well and leave to soak for 20–25 minutes.

Wash the apples, remove the skin and seeds and cut into thin slices.

Place the apples on the soaked bread and add cinnamon.

Let's mix everything again.

Grease a baking dish with butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs.

Place the resulting dough with apples into the mold and compact it well.

Place the mold in the oven, preheated to 180°C, and bake until golden brown.

Let the white bread charlotte cool in the mold, remove and decorate with sweet powder.

Traditional charlotte

Our usual charlotte is an airy sponge cake with apples. Traditional charlotte is made from bread and apples. The bread is moistened with a milky consistency with eggs, or melted butter with sugar, or syrup and wine. You can add dried fruits, candied fruits, cinnamon, as well as any other fruits and berries to apples. There is no one recipe for charlotte; it is a dish of ordinary people, which was prepared from the remains of dry bread, which was flavored with what was available. One of the options I would like to offer is charlotte made from snow-white bread. If you have any bread left, stock it up and be sure to use this recipe.

Traditional charlotte recipe

My mold has a diameter of 23 cm. Almost all of the bread is used up, so if you are going to cook from leftovers, roughly estimate that there will be approximately enough for a whole loaf of bread. Take a proven form so that the cake literally does not stick, because it comes out very tender, and you must not forget that it is assembled from pieces of bread. You can use a collapsible form, it will be even easier.

Peel the apples and remove the core.

Cut into small cubes.

Steam the raisins. add to apples.

Mix 2 tablespoons of sugar with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Add the sweet mixture to the apples. Mix everything.

Cut off the crusts from the bread. If the bread is not very dry, you can throw in the crusts.

Cut the bread into pieces 1 cm wide.

Mix the remaining sugar with the eggs.

Add milk to the egg mixture. Mix.

Grease the mold well with butter. Not all the oil has to go, but about ¼ of the total cooked oil. The rest will go into the filling.

Dip pieces of bread into egg mixture

and place it tightly on the bottom of the mold.

We cover the edges of the mold in the same way.

Place apple filling on top.

Place pieces of remaining butter on top of the filling.

On top of the inside we again very tightly lay the bread soaked in the egg mixture. If there is any egg mixture left, pour it over the charlotte.

Place in an oven preheated to 180 for 30-40 minutes. Charlotte should be perfectly browned.

We take out the finished charlotte and leave it for a while to cool slightly. Only later do we carefully remove it from the mold. I simply lift the pie with a narrow spatula, cover it with a huge dish on top, and turn the pan over. The pie ends up on the plate itself. For a more representative look, I sprinkle some sweet powder on top.

Charlotte made from snow-white bread is also good when served cool.

Bread charlotte

For the charlotte recipe you will need:

loaf (or French baguette) - 2 pcs.
butter – 100g
apples (sour or sweet and sour) – about 1 kg
sugar – 1/2 cup
rum (cognac or brandy) – 50 ml
egg (yolk) – 2 pcs.
milk – 3-4 tbsp.

Recipe for making charlotte:

Cut the loaves, which have dried out a little and are no longer very suitable for sandwiches, into slices about 1 cm wide.

Cut off the crusts from each slice so that you get rectangular pieces with a height equal to the height of the springform baking dish. The slices are placed in the mold slightly overlapping so that after baking the finished charlotte does not fall apart. Separately cut out slices of loaf for the bottom of the pie. As a standard, you need to cut out 1 circle and triangles from the loaf slices, which will lie around the circle in order to moderately cover the bottom of the mold.

Cut some of the slices into small cubes and mix with about 20g of melted butter. Place them on a baking sheet and lightly dry them in an oven preheated to 180C. These crackers will go into the filling.

For the inside, peel juicy, sour or sweet and sour apples, remove the seeds and cut into cubes or bars.

Place the apples in a saucepan in which approximately 50g of butter has already been melted, sprinkle with sugar, pour in rum or cognac and simmer until soft. Let the insides cool slightly, transfer to a separate bowl and add crackers. Mix. Use the juice formed when stewing apples to moisten the loaf slices, which we will use to line the walls and bottom of the mold.

Cover the bottom of the mold with baking paper, grease the bottom and walls with vegetable oil. Dip any slice into melted butter or apple juice.

Then brush one edge with the yolks whipped with milk and place in the mold.

Place the slices used to line the walls of the mold overlapping, pressing tightly with the edges, dipped in egg yolk as shown in the photo.

Fill the bottom of the mold with slices dipped in oil or juice.

Fill the mold with apple innards.

Place slices of bread on top of the apple inside - this will be the bottom of the charlotte. Cover the slices of bread with cut crusts or cover with foil so that this layer of bread does not dry out or burn. Place the charlotte in an oven preheated to 180C for 20 minutes. When the charlotte is ready, use a narrow knife to run along the inside of the mold, in case the bread slices are stuck to the mold. Turn the pan over onto a plate, remove the cake from it and remove the baking paper. Charlotte is ready. Serve immediately. You can have it without anything, or you can have it with whipped cream, vanilla sauce or any berry syrup.