The Apple Diaries 2015 - Apple Charlotte

Apple Charlotte is a dish first found in recipe books from the beginning of the 19th century.  It consists of buttery bread which lines a basin or dish which is then filled with stewed fruit.  A bread 'lid' is popped on top and the whole thing is baked until the bread is golden and crispy.  The Charlotte is then turned out of the basin to be admired by all before tucking in.  

The idea of trying this dish really appealed to me as I love the combination of crispy bread with fruit (as in the Betty I made recently).  The recipe in my Good Old Fashioned Puddings book however was for Apple and Marmalade Charlotte which I didn't like the sound of, so I adapted it slightly and will give my own version below.

As you can see,when I turned the Charlotte out the bread casing gradually began to splay out, slightly spoiling the overall effect.  Luckily it certainly didn't spoil the overall taste, and I wasn't trying to impress any dinner-party guests!  I think next time however I would arrange the bread slices so they slightly overlapped in order to avoid this 'slump'.  But you can learn from my mistake.

Apple (and Blackberry) Charlotte

225g butter
115g caster sugar
4 or 5 slices of day-old white bread
600g cooking apples (or a mix of apples and blackberries)
1 tbsp water

Melt the butter and brush the inside of your chosen mould.  I used the basin in which I cook a medium-sized Christmas Pudding, but you can also use a round cake tin or a loaf tin.  Remove the crusts, then cutting and jigsawing your bread, gradually line the basin by dipping pieces of bread into the melted butter and then pressing the bread around the basin.  I used a round cutter to create a circle of bread for the bottom of the basin, then strips of bread for the sides (see note above about overlapping). 

Peel, core and slice the apples and gently stew in a pan with the sugar and water (and blackberries if using).  Fill the bread-lined basin with the fruit mixture and then place a whole crustless slice of bread dipped in the last of the butter on top of the apples.

Bake in a preheated oven at 220C/425F/gas 7 for 30-40 minutes until brown.

Slide a knife around inside the basin to loosen the Charlotte, then carefully turn out onto a plate.  Serve with cream, custard or vanilla ice-cream.

Rhubarb Kuchen

Breakfast Baking.  Something I can rarely be bothered to do - I'd always rather plump for an extra half-hour in bed, and settle for a bowl of cereal.  But last weekend was different.  The weather was hot, really hot, and somehow as soon as I woke up and saw the sun shining outside, I couldn't stay in bed.  On Saturday morning we ate breakfast in the garden, enjoying the sunshine before it got too warm (yes, I know it's hard to believe, but I am still in England!), and this set me thinking that breakfast in the sun is a great occasion and should be celebrated.

Finding some slightly out-of-date packets of dried yeast, plus feeling guilty about the rhubarb that was languishing in the bottom of the fridge spurred me on to search through How to Be a Domestic Goddess, my favourite Nigella book...  I had a recollection of some kind of yeasted cake, or sweet bread, that used rhubarb - and there it was.

Kuchen is German for 'cake' but this is really a hybrid cake/bread recipe.  I did as Nigella suggested and made up the rich dough recipe the night before, leaving it in the fridge to rise slowly overnight.  I was a bit sceptical that this would work actually, but sure enough in the morning it had doubled in size.  I brought it out of the fridge, pressed it into the tin and left it to come up to room temperature while I made the topping.  The dough becomes easier to stretch as it warms up, so I didn't force it while it was fridge-cold.

I didn't have quite the required weight of rhubarb, so added some strawberries to make it up - rhubarb and strawberry are a great combination of flavours.

I also didn't want to make the crumble topping (just one step too far on a Sunday morning!) so sprinkled over some flaked almonds instead.

A mere hour or so after getting out of bed, this was baked and ready to eat.  The dough was browned and puffy, and the fruits had oozed their sugary juices over the kuchen and into the pan. 

 And perfect with a cup of coffee in the garden (pyjamas obligatory!).

The recipe, if you don't have the book, is as follows:

Rhubarb Crumble Kuchen (serves 8)

Dough:
350-400g strong white flour
½ teaspoon salt
50g caster sugar
3 ½g easy blend yeast (half a sachet), or 7g fresh yeast
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
grated zest of ½ a lemon (I omitted this, with no ill effects)
good grating of fresh nutmeg
125ml milk, warmed
50g unsalted butter, softened


Topping:
1 large egg
1 tablespoon cream
grating of fresh nutmeg
350g trimmed rhubarb, finely chopped (I had just less than 300g rhubarb and made up the weight with strawberries, also finely chopped)
75g caster sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
¼ teaspoon allspice (I omitted this)


Crumble topping:
30g unsalted butter, cold and diced
50g self raising flour
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 tablespoon demerara sugar

Put 350g of the flour in a bowl with the salt, sugar and yeast. beat the eggs and add them, with the vanilla, lemon zest and nutmeg, to the lukewarm milk. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a medium soft dough, being prepared to add more flour as necessary. Nigella says she generally uses 400g but advises you start off with the smaller amount and just add extra as needed. Work in the soft butter and knead by hand for about 10 minutes (or using the dough-hook in the KitchenAid for about 5 minutes as I did).

When the dough is ready it will appear smoother and springier – it suddenly seems to 'plump up to glossy life' as Nigella puts it so eloquently.


Cover with a tea towel and leave until it doubles (1-1¼ hours) or leave to rise slowly in a cold place (the fridge is fine) overnight if you want to have this for breakfast (let the dough come back to room temperature before using it).

Punch down and stretch to line a swiss-roll tin (c30cm x 20cm) which you have lined with greaseproof paper. if you are struggling to get it stretch to fill the tin, leave it to rest for 10 minutes mid-stretch.  Leave to prove for 15-20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 200c.

When the dough is ready, beat the egg and cream together, grate in some nutmeg and brush the mixture over the dough. This gives a gloriously glossy topping to the Kuchen.

Stir the rhubarb together with the sugar and allspice but don’t do this until the last minute as the sugar makes the rhubarb release its water.  Sprinkle the rhubarb-sugar mix over the egg-washed dough.
To make the crumble topping (although flaked almonds are just fine!), rub the cold diced butter into the flour until becomes like sand and then stir in the sugars with a fork.  Top the fruit with the crumble.

Put in the oven for 15 minutes then turn down to 180c and cook for a further 15-20 minutes, until the dough is swelling and golden at the edges and cooked within.

Remove from the oven and leave in the tin for 15 minutes.  Slice and eat, still warm. In your pyjamas.

I can't wait to try this with other fruits!  I think it could work well with many other toppings.  I have a bag of foraged blackberries in the freezer, so I think that will be my next Kuchen, perhaps also with apple as Nigella suggests in this alternative Kuchen recipe.

Rhubarb

Ruby Food

Part of our recent Summer holiday was spent in Devon, staying with my parents.  It's an area that we both love, and it's great to have a base down there, with lots of family in the vicinity.  This year was also a special one, in that it was both my parents', and my aunt and uncle's Ruby Wedding Anniversaries.  40 years - impressive!  The Summer of '69 must have been a busy one for my grandparents.

I began thinking about a present as soon as heard that there was to be a family party, and soon came up with the idea of a red-themed hamper.  Sometimes I get struck by a wave of anti-consumerism, and horror at the sheer amount of 'stuff' that people seem to own nowadays (myself most definitely included), and luckily this feeling ties in neatly with the idea that home-made and edible gifts are lovely to receive. 

A quick browse through my many 'preserves' recipe books provided inspiration aplenty, but I thought I'd share one of the most successful projects with you: Ruby Fizz.  Earlier this Summer we had great success with making Elderflower 'Champagne', using this recipe, or something quite like it.  To be honest, there are a multitude of different recipes out there, each with varying quantities of elderflower, sugar, water, etc, so take your pick!  We soon got to thinking that we could use the same principle to create any kind of alcoholic (and it is alcoholic!) fruit fizz.  As we had a basket of the wild plums that I mentioned previously in this post, and a bag of foraged blackberries in the freezer from last Autumn, this seemed the perfect place to start.

Simply crush the fruit - enough to cover the base of a clean washing-up bowl - gently with a potato masher, and add about 500g of sugar.  This will seem a lot, but the fermentation process 'eats' some of the sugar, so the finished product shouldn't be too sickly-sweet.  Pour on 1 litre of boiling water and stir to dissolve the sugar, then add 2 litres of cold water.  This should create the ideal temperature to activate the yeast - add a pinch of dried yeast now.  Stir, cover with a clean tea towel, and wait...   After a day or two, you should begin to see signs of the fermentation starting.  As you can see from the first photo, ours looked rather sinister, like a bubbling swamp!  A quick taste will confirm that it is beginning to fizz.  After 3 days, scoop out the fruit (pic 2) and then strain into PLASTIC bottles (can't emphasise this enough - read what can happen if you try to use glass), leaving a few cm free at the top.  Then leave the bottles for at least a week.  Of course, plastic bottles can explode too, so every day I opened the lids very slightly just to let the excess gas escape.  You will hear a very satisfying fizzzzzzzzz when you do this.  In fact Rob and I began almost racing eachother downstairs in the mornings for the privilege of being the one to do this daily job!  You'll see the bottles begin to bulge ominously if you don't do this every day, so be sure not to go away on holiday at this point.

 

 

 

Et voila, Ruby Fizz ready for the hamper.  We have also kept a couple of bottles of this.  It's several weeks old now and has 'aged' well.  It's definitely worth chilling it thoroughly before serving as it remains very 'lively' when opened!  

So the fizz went into the hamper alongside the Cherry Jam, Rhubarb and Strawberry Jam, Cherry Ratafia (liqueur) and Raspberry Vinegar (all homemade, and mostly with foraged fruit), and the Ruby Port, Lindt Chocolates and bar of Bourneville Chocolate (bought, obviously) to complete the gift.

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes were made for the afternoon tea, 'dressed' most beautifully once again by some gorgeous Cupcake Wrappers made by the wonderful Dani - check out the website here.  I asked Dani if she had suitable wrappers for a Ruby Wedding and she went to the trouble of ordering some new papers, and sending me several samples to choose from.  Now that's customer service!

The cupcakes were filled with macerated strawberries, and topped with cream cheese icing, much as I did with the cherry ones earlier in the Summer.

The party was a lovely occasion - many congratulations to Jenny and Bob, and Nick and Gwen!