Baked Apple Christmas Chocolate by Tiroler Edle with Cinnamon
Baked Apple Christmas Chocolate by Tiroler Edle is a milk chocolate with 39 percent cocoa, filled with a light ganache made from apple juice, apple brandy, cinnamon, and cloves. The spices turn the fruit into exactly what the oven would otherwise do to it.
Baked Apple Christmas Chocolate is part of the winter range from Tiroler Edle in Landeck, Tyrol, and is only available on shelves during the Advent season. Underneath the milk chocolate lies a light ganache with apple juice and apple brandy, spiced with cinnamon, clove, and a hint of almond oil. Consequently, it contains alcohol.
Apple, cinnamon, and clove in a light ganache
Even before the first piece, the scent of baked apple fills the room as soon as the red paper is opened.
The apple juice provides the sweetness and the bright acidity of the ripe fruit, the brandy adds a layer of warmth, and only the spices pull the picture together. Cinnamon gives a rounded, woody sweetness, while the clove adds a small, sharp point on top, much like pushing the whole bud into the fruit skin.
Because the brandy remains in the ganache, the bar contains alcohol and belongs on the adults' Advent plate. The milk chocolate exterior holds everything together and remains light enough for the fruit to take center stage.
Why the amount of clove is decisive here
Cloves are the most assertive spice in the Christmas cupboard, and in a cream, they have plenty of room to spread.
Their aroma comes from the eugenol in the dried flower bud, which dissolves perfectly in fat and stays there. In a ganache made from cocoa butter and cream, this means: a trace too much, and the winter fruit becomes a cough drop. Once dried, the small bud carries many times what a fresh blossom would yield.
That is why Tiroler Edle adds a little almond oil to this filling. It distributes the fat-soluble aromas evenly throughout the filling, ensuring that the cinnamon and clove arrive with equal intensity everywhere without forming concentrated pockets.
Baked apple as a recipe and a memory
Baked apples have been a staple of the Advent season in the Alpine region for generations, and they rely on a single process.
In a hot oven, the starch in the fruit breaks down into sugar, the juice exudes and caramelizes at the edge of the pan, while the skin bursts and draws the spices into the soft flesh. The escaping sugar browns on the tray, and the light fruit takes on a deep, almost malty tone. The filling replicates exactly this state between fresh fruit and compote.
The fact that juice and brandy from Tyrolean fruit are used has a practical reason: together, they bring sweetness and fragrance to a cream that cannot be boiled without compromising the chocolate around it.
With mulled wine, with tea, in the Advent calendar
Taken out of the cool pantry shortly before eating, the ganache yields most beautifully and the fragrance unfolds completely.
A black tea with bergamot picks up the clove, a hot mulled wine extends the spice, and on a colorful plate next to gingerbread and vanilla crescents, no explanation is needed. For an Advent calendar, the chocolate can be broken into pieces and wrapped individually.
The Christmas Chocolate with Mulled Wine comes from the same winter series. You can find more chocolate bars and all varieties from Tiroler Edle right next door.
