It’s that time again. When the trees change colour, the temperature drops, the Mod hoves into sight – so very tired right now – and the office tree produces a sizeable crop of apples. Yes Autumn is upon us and the time has come for me to cook lots of things with apples and write them up for this blog!
This year the apples were absolutely massive, I came home with some of the largest at 400/500grams a pop – and even then I missed out on the largest which one of my colleagues snaffled as fair reward for having harvested them for the rest of us – so when I needed 600 grams of chopped apples for something that translated to two big bruisers! One of my colleagues was admiring the apples but bemoaning his inability to bake, when another colleague suggested making parsnip and apple soup. He wasn’t convinced but I was delighted by the idea, as I’d picked up some parsnips at the weekend and had been pondering what I’d do with them. Soup it was. In the end I didn’t have enough parsnips but I made up the difference with carrots which I think makes for a nicer soup, or at least one more to my taste. Also, as per the suggestion of the recipe I added a little curry powder to the mix, which smelled amazing while cooking but didn’t really come through in the finished soup so clearly I need to be a bit more heavy handed with the seasoning. Nonetheless, in an otherwise hectic week both the making and the eating of the soup was a much needed comfort and opportunity to take a little time for myself among the chaos.
As a couple of the apples were a little bruised by their adventures, I thought it best to get them cooked up quickly, so I made a batch of Lorraine Pascale’s reliable apple sauce, so that even if I ended up not having time to do anything particularly fancy with them, I could at least have a tasty breakfast accompaniment.
I did end up making something more substantial with my cooked apples – although a small tub did end up in the freezer as a present for future me and future breakfasts – in the shape of mini apple pies. Knowing I’d be on early shift this week – and knowing it was the first week of those that would see me heading to work while it was still full dark – I definitely needed something special for ‘second breakfast’ to keep me going through the rest of my shift. So I made mini apple pies, not the elegant chaussons de pommes that I’d have made with more time and energy but instead little shortcrust pastry pies – those mini pie tins I bought for a laugh when I first moved up here have well a truly proved their worth – were the order of the day. I found a cute pastry cutter when I moved and I love the little stars it makes so I gave them all interlocking star lids that were a source of joy – to me – and amusement – to my colleagues who saw my breakfast.
Which left me with a small portion of apple sauce left to use up, what should I make? Tartlets to use up the remains of the short crust pastry? Mini chaussons de pomme? Some really decadent cheats Danish pastries? Was there even enough for muffins? Keep it simple and make overnight oats for the morning I’d have run out of pies for second breakfast?
I decided on muffins. Most muffin recipes that involve apples say two apples – grated if eaters, cooked down with spices if cookers – and I reckoned that the remaining apple sauce I had was roughly equivalent to two large apples so decided to make an attempt at that. I’ve found muffin recipes to be a bit hit and miss, so I stuck with the old faithful that is Ainsley Harriot’s breakfast muffin, in it’s marmalade variation. That way I could add a bit of whole meal flour and cut back on the sugar to get more of a breakfast muffin result. Unfortunately they were neither as apple-y or as cinnamon heavy as I’d have liked – I cooked the apple sauce with cinnamon and ginger, but added half a teaspoon of both cinnamon and nutmeg to the muffin mix, which was definitely a good idea, but I should have been braver and used a full teaspoon of each I think. As it was there was enough spice to smell amazing and autumnal but not enough to make them taste as good. They are perfectly acceptable breakfast muffins but I think the recipe still needs further refining.
Cupboard Life 