Chef Håkan Lundberg of The Minneapolis Club Creates the Perfect Plate

Chef Håkan Lundberg of The Minneapolis Club creates Baked Stuffed Apple with Bonfire Ice Cream.

Swedish-born Håkan Lundberg, executive chef at the Minneapolis Club, prides himself on pushing boundaries in the kitchen—he once crafted edible Rubik’s Cubes from melons. But his latest venture is perhaps his most ambitious: creating a new flavor. When brainstorming a gluten-free dessert, a sous chef suggested apples stuffed with raisins, caramel, and torched marshmallows, which Lundberg thought to enhance by adding a cylinder of “bonfire” ice cream on top. “I’m a sucker for having hot and cold on the same plate,” he explains. To find the perfect toasty flavor, Lundberg experimented with smoking the marshmallows and catching smoke under a globe before deciding to turn to nature. By burning pinecones, branches, hay, and leaves, and steeping them in an ice-cream base, Lundberg was able to replicate the essence of sitting around a warm fire on a cold night. “It’s an entirely new flavor, and it’s very seldom that you come up with a new flavor,” he says. “It’s very inspiring to come up with something completely on your own like that.”

Hakan Lundberg of The Minneapolis Club

Chef Hakan Lundberg of The Minneapolis Club makes dessert

The Minneapolis Club chef Hakan Lundberg in the kitchen

The Minneapolis Club cutting apples

The Minneapolis Club carmelizing fruit

Chef Hakan Lundberg of The Minneapolis Club in the kitchen

Chef Hakan Lundberg of The Minneapolis Club plating

The Minneapolis Club final plate

Perfect Plate

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