Apple Compote Recipe with Rum

This apple compote with rum, a recipe from pastry chef Joanne Chang, is smooth and deeply flavored with more texture than a standard apple butter. Chang developed the compote to use in her apple-rum spice cake — layered with light chiffon and gingery cream cheese frosting — but it’s also delicious on its own, spread on buttered scones or served with waffles or latkes.

How to flambé

To give the compote a caramelized rum flavor without making it overwhelmingly boozy, Chang chooses to flambé: a dramatic (and fun!) technique for safely burning off some of the alcohol. After cooking the apples with brown sugar and other ingredients, she takes the skillet off the heat, pours in the rum, and uses a match to set it alight. (What’s actually ignited is vaporized alcohol, which begins to evaporate when it hits the hot pan.) Shake the skillet until the flames naturally die down, then return it to the heat and cook until the remaining rum has reduced further. Flambéing doesn’t eliminate the majority of the alcohol, but it does take the edge off and adds notable complexity to the flavor.

Notes from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen

• Chang uses gold rum, which tends to be aged longer than “white” rum, but with a lighter body and sometimes a shorter aging time than dark rum.