Top tip: deciding to make 12 mini apple pies instead of one big one at the last minute is not the best idea. These were for my friends who were arriving for lunch at 1pm and my last minute change meant that at 12:55 I still hadn’t started on the main course…But I think these were worth it! And hey, my friends didn’t mind the slight delay. 
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This cake certainly lived up to the expectations created by its fabulous name. I knew from the raw mixture it was going to be good and while it is baking it makes the house smell incredible. The browned butter in the sponge makes all the difference, especially combined with the cinnamon. The generous amount of caramel makes it deliciously decadent – particularly if you add a drizzle of cream to your slice. This acted as the ultimate comfort food to rid me of end of summer or post holiday blues! You can find the recipe here – my only change was to use extra flour to replace some of the ground almonds, simply because I didn’t have enough and the rain was a tad too ferocious to persuade me to go out and buy more! Eating this cake, listening to the rain, watching it get dark at 5pm – autumn is definitely here. 
Today is the second instalment in the ‘Lucy’s Recipes’ series of podcasts over on podium.me and it is one of my favourite recipes – sausage plait! I spoke briefly about this a few months ago but it really is a weekday favourite at my house. With only 4 ingredients it is so simple but worth it and perfect for after a long day at work or school – and then the leftovers are just as good in a lunchbox the next day. It’s also really versatile to adapt to your favourite flavours – you an experiment with different types of sausages, herbs and spices. It also doesn’t require exact quantities – if you have some leftover sausagemeat or puff pastry it is You can find the recipe below and listen to the podcast here – enjoy! 
Ingredients: 350g puff pastry
8 sausages
1 apple
1 onion
1. Preheat the oven to 190’C. Dice the apple and onion – there is no need to peel the apple.
2. Remove the sausages from their skins by making a small cut in the casing and peeling it off. Add the sausages, apple and onion to a large bowl.
3. Mix with a wooden spoon or your hands until the apple and onion are evenly distributed throughout the sausage meat.
4. Roll out the puff pastry on a floured surface to a large rectangle, a few mm thick. Shape the sausage mixture into a rectangle down the centre of the puff pastry.
5. Cut diagonal slits an inch apart in the puff pastry either side of the sausage mixture, towards the same end of the plait on both sides.
6. Starting at the end nearest you, fold the pieces of pastry over the sausage meat alternately, forming a plait effect. Bring up the ends of the pastry and trim off any excess.
7. Brush the plait with beaten egg and place on a large baking tray. Bake for 30minutes until the pastry is risen, crisp and golden. Enjoy!
These buns are the recipe I mentioned I was forced to put on hold due to the combination of a lack of ingredients + heavy snow = me not going outside. Normally I’d have just forgotten about the recipe and moved on to one of the many other tempting bakes in my cookbooks or recipe files, but something made me keep thinking about these. Then I was looking back through my archives and noticed that in January 2011 I posted these Stollen Swirls and in January 2010 I made Glazed Fruit Rolls – I clearly have a thing for yeasted rolls in January! It must be a combination of wanting to start the new year by challenging myself in baking including doing more work with yeast, and the more simple desire of something warm, doughy and carby to eat in the cold! Either way it was a clear sign and as soon as the pesky snow melted I was out making sure my cupboards were prepared for these.
Catchy eh? When I went on Tastespotting recently, almost every other photo was an apple recipe. Particularly apple pie. Apple Crumble Bars, Blackberry Apple Tarts, Mini Apple Hand Pies, Apple Cake with Salted Caramel Icing…it went on and on. I took this as a clear (and hunger-inducing) sign to get baking and I have been – baked apples, stewed apples, apple crumb bars have all been made and thoroughly enjoyed, but for one reason and another not blogged. So it was out to the garden to pick some final rosy red apples, then back to the kitchen to continue on this Autumn baking bandwagon and finally get something appley on the blog.
Apple, Carrot, Almond and Sultana Shortbread, adapted from Tamasin Day-Lewis
200g wholemeal flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
150g unsalted butter, room temperature
100g light brown sugar
50g carrot, grated (about 2 small carrots)
1 small apple, grated
1/2 tsp. almond extract
75g sultanas1. Preheat the oven to 180’C or 350F. Sift the semolina, flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl, and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Stir in the carrot, apple, almond extract and sultanas.
3. Add the the flour mixture into the butter mixture and stir until a dough forms and brings everything together. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for at least thirty minutes.
4. Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface to around 1cm thick. Stamp out shortbread biscuits, then place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies start to brown just a bit.
Makes about 20 cookies, depending on the size of your cutter.
My ‘Recipes To Make’ file of bookmarked links in my Favourites is getting a little out of control. 153 recipes, just in the ‘Sweet’ section – so not including a a ‘Savoury’ section or a notebook full of bits cut out from papers and magazines. Considering I bake roughly once a week, it would take me around 3 years to complete everything! Just reading the list makes me hungry. Peach Shortbread anyone? Lemon Rhubarb Bundt Cake? Blackberry Cream Cheese Pie?Almond Chocolate Tart? And so much more goodness yet my bookmarked file gets forgotten. Not any more! The ‘Sweet’ section is organised alphabetically (get me) so one of the first recipes I see every time I add something was these Apple Cinnamon Bars. A revision break yesterday called for a quick bake and these fitted the bill nicely.
Now that it’s autumn and winter weather, it’s time to start making proper puddings. Biscuits and cupcakes are fabulous, but on a dark winter evening a hot pudding is just the thing. Warming dishes like steamed sponges, crumbles, self-saucing puddings, chocolate fondants and anything that can be served with custard really come in to their own. It’s the season of comfort food! For me pies are a perfect winter dish because, whilst they are tasty made with summer fruits, I think the classic Autumn double crust apple pie is very hard to beat.
Come Autumn, I think I could easily bake apple cake every single weekend. We have three apple trees, all producing continuous fruit for several weeks. One counter in our kitchen is currently just a pile of apples in various bowls, baskets and bags – it’s like living in a farmers market. We have several types of apples – from small, sweet red ones to big green cooking apples. And this excess apple supply means getting a touch inventive with our fruit! Grated apple and yoghurt is my new favourite food. Sausage rolls with apple and onion make a perfect packed lunch. Baked apples stuffed with mincemeat or sultanas served with cream are best eaten slowly in front of Downton Abbey on a Sunday evening. But, sometimes, a good old hearty apple cake is just the thing.
The book is a flip book, with the pages split into three separate sections – a cupcake recipe, an icing recipe and an idea for how to decorate the cupcake. These pages are interchangeable so you can mix and match different flavours and eventually choose a page from each different section that you most like. There’s 23 ideas in each section ranging from the classic to a bit different. For the cupcakes it ranges from Lemon to Doughnut cupcakes, for the icing from Vanilla to Pineapple butter flavours. I chose to make the Apple and Almond Cupcakes with Penuche Frosting, decorated with Sprinkles.
I chose to halve the recipe which I later half regretted as the results were so delicious we could have easily eaten a full batch very quickly! The recipes were easy to follow and created very moreish results. The cupcake was very soft and tender, almost muffin like with the involvement of the fruit. The Penuche icing was not a flavour I’d heard of before which was why I wanted to try it. I learnt that penuche is a type of fudge, so this icing just involved melting together butter and brown sugar and then beating in icing sugar. It was thick and very sweet and I thought worked nicely with the apple base – the finished products were like toffee apple flavours in cake form! I chose simple sprinkles for decoration but there were lots of ideas in the book, from lavender sprigs to crushed cookies to crystallized rose petals.
I think this book would be a great gift because it is fun and light hearted but the recipes are still interesting and actually work. I also think it’s good for inspiration, mixing new flavours or ideas and creating something unique. I think the book would benefit from real pictures of the food as there’s only one at the very start, but the cartoons are still fun. Plus, as the title suggests, there are 10,000 ways to combine all the different ideas so it’ll keep you busy for a while! Ivy Press have kindly agreed to give away another copy of this lovely little book – all you have to do is comment on this post by the 7th October saying you’d like a copy and I'll pick a winner with a random number generator! Good Luck everybody!
This apple shortcake is a recipe from my Granny, which she had printed in a WI cookery book years ago. It was one of my Dad’s favourites when he was little – he even had it instead of a birthday cake one year. It is super simple to make, and a very good way of getting rid of a glut of apples from an apple tree. The shortcake is made of two thick layers of shortbread – so they go almost cakey in the middle – with a layer of sliced apple in the middle. Easy!
The cake is very moreish and perfect for afternoon tea because it isn’t really heavy or rich like a big slice of layered cake. My Mum and I considered adding a drizzle of icing on top but it really doesn’t need it because you don’t really ice shortbread and the simple caster sugar topping works just deliciously :) I’ve got the original instructions below, but for the shortbread you can just bung all the ingredients in a food processer and pulse until they begin to come together. Also, be generous with the apple because I only used one but I think it was more medium than large and I could have used more. Hope you enjoy!
Apple and Olive Oil Cake With Maple Cream Cheese Icing, from Ottolenghi
Ingredients for cake:
Icing:
Preheat the oven to 170C. Sift the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Meanwhile, whisk the olive oil, vanilla and sugar together until voluminous and smooth. Next whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the apples and lemon zest and then the flour. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold carefully into the cake batter. Grease and line two sandwich tins and bake for 45 mins until a cake batter comes out clean. Once cooked, allow the cakes to cool completely before icing.
To make the icing, beat together the butter and maple syrup and sugar until light and airy. Next add in the cream cheese and beat until it’s totally smooth. Use half of the icing to the sandwich the cakes together, and smooth the remaining frosting over the top.
In London, we never seem to ‘suffer’ from seasonal gluts of strawberries and raspberries. My family is not presented with the problem of a complete summer overflow of nectarines, blueberries or peaches. We manage to grow the odd bunch of raspberries or loganberries – enough to be picked and eaten, there and then, warm in the sun. But certainly not enough produce to find that even after baking a cake, a crumble, eating gallons raw, and finishing off with some cookies that our stash is still languishing in the garden. This all changes round about this time of year.
A lot of the time these days, emphasis is put on how bad the need for speed is. There are two sides to the story: people who want things done super quickly, and those who just want everyone to slow down and relax. This cake happily bridges the gap between both ideas.
Ingredients: 225g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
2tsp ground mixed spice or cinnamon
255g light brown soft sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
200ml sunflower oil
310g apples, cored and diced (roughly 3 apples)
100g sultanas
Demerara sugar
Method: 1. Sieve the flour, salt and spices into a bowl and then stir in the sugar.
2. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the eggs and the oil.
3. Mix until completely smooth and then add the apple and sultanas. Spoon into a lightly greased 30x20cm tin and sprinkle with sugar.
4. Bake at 180’C (Gas Mark 4) for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden. 
I won’t bake things with ingredients I don’t like. It may seem silly – but I don’t see the point in wasting my time with bakes that, ultimately, I’m not going to be able to enjoy. Hence why you have never seen pistachios on the blog (or walnuts, hazelnuts or peanuts…). You won’t see mushrooms/lasagne/cheese soufflé. Great changes will happen before prawns or blue cheese make an appearance. I’m not a fussy eater and I like to try new things, of course, but I know what I do and don’t like.
Together, bakes containing these three stars make 29 out of my 77 posts so far – quite a hefty proportion. All very different ingredients, but my favourites nonetheless. Whether the star ingredient, or sharing the spotlight, these ingredients always make me hungry. When my sister first started cooking ground almonds went into almost everything. It’s no different with me, and I have more almondy treats still coming up! But today, almond is indeed sharing the spotlight. Glorious pink apples take the stage (ahem, plate) to fill this pretty, juicy cake.
Inspiration can come from the randomest places, in this case a little Waitrose leaflet. This cake takes minutes to knock up but is absolutely scrumptious when cooked so it is perfect for those short-notice guests. The shortbread-style base is full of crisp and crunch, whilst the apples slowly soften down and release their delicate pink flavour. Then the flaky almond sweet crumble just tops it all off…I’m now craving some more and it’s all gone.
Apple Crumble Cake, from Waitrose NEW
Serves 6-8
Ingredients: 200g plain flour
150g butter
80g caster sugar
3 chopped apples
1tbsp demerara sugar
75g flaked almonds.
Here in the UK, it’s that time of year where we experience the shift between the sunny days of summer and the rapidly cooling days of autumn. For me, the difference is most noticeable with the gathering of new stationery and uniform: and the inevitable return to school. But food wise, the change is also quietly happening. Instead of feasting on fresh strawberries, I enjoy blackberries. Instead of juicy nectarines and peaches, there are big, crunchy apples. Instead of cooling ice-creams and frozen mousse, I turn on the oven, bake and use pastry...
Other than the simplicity of them, another reason I enjoyed these turnovers so much was because of the ingredients. I made these whilst in our cottage in Suffolk, where the abundance of fresh fruit was great. We have a huge apple tree in the garden there, so the apples were all our own. And the lanes all around us were edged thickly with the thick wild brambles full of big blackberries. Baking is all the more fun when the ingredients are your own and free!
There is no recipe needed, really, as you just need puff pastry and glorious fresh fruit. Once the pasty is rolled, use an extra large cookie cutter (I just cut round a small bowl) to get large circles of the pastry. Pile your fruit of choice on one half of the pastry, and carefully fold the other half over the top, trying to avoid sharp chopped-apple corners! Crimp the edges together really well – otherwise they’ll all split open, as some of mine did, and you’ll lose all the lovely juices. Then just bake for about 10-15minutes until the pastry is golden brown and puffed. Its best to eat on the day they are made or the pastry goes a bit soggy – but I doubt this will be much of a hardship!
Till next time, :) XX
And after!
