The Apple Diaries 2015 - Mary Apple's Cake

I was browsing back through this blog earlier today, thinking that I needed some inspiration for a pudding this weekend, and I stumbled upon a post I'd written in 2008 which talked about our 'teeny tiny apple tree' next to the drive of Bramley Cottage.  It made me laugh because now, 7 years later, that tree is definitely not teeny tiny any more!  It's easily 10ft high - and probably 10ft wide too - and this year is absolutely laden with huge Bramley apples.  The apple crop seems to be superb on alternate years; last year I think we had the grand total of 3 apples on the tree, but thankfully I had made jars and jars of chutneys and apple jellies during the previous year's glut so it didn't particularly matter.  But this year it'll be back to the stove for multiple batches of apple-based preserves to see us through the next 2 years, and as many apple dishes as we can possibly eat!

So I thought I'd keep an online 'apple diary' of the dishes that we make, sweet and savoury, to refer back to in future years when I'm drowning under the weight of apples again.

First off is an appley pudding that I first made back in 2008.  The recipe is already on this blog but buried in a long post about lots of recipes, so I thought it deserved repeating.  The recipe credit must go to Patricia Wells, but it was posted long ago in the food-forum to which I belong by a wonderful cook who went by the screen-name of 'Mary Apple'.  I have no record of whether this should be made with eating or cooking apples, but I like it with Bramleys as they provide a sharp contrast to the sweet batter and the sweetness of the vanilla custard with which we serve it. 

Mary Apple's Cake

In a pie pan (I used a 20cm springform) peel and slice 4 apples; I tend to quarter the apples and then slice them across each quarter to give approximately inch-square pieces.  (It's hard to judge this amount when using Bramleys as they vary so much in size, but I used 3 large ones - with lots of bruised and buggy bits cut out!  You need the pan to be about 3/4 full with apple.  Yes, that's a LOT of apples!)

In a bowl mix 1/2 cup plain flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 2 tbsp milk (or cream), 1 tsp vanilla, a pinch of salt, 1 tbsp baking powder, 2 eggs.

Mix and pour over apples.  There won't be very much of this mixture, but stir it around in the sliced apples as much as you are able.

Bake at 350F/180C for about 20-25 min till light brown.  Some of the apple pieces may catch slightly if they are sticking up but this really doesn't matter. 

Take out and top with a thin paste made from 3 tbsp softened butter, 1/3 cup sugar and 1 egg.

Put back in the oven until browned - about 10-15 minutes.

This is really more of a dessert than a cake as its a large proportion of apples to a rather smaller amount of batter.   The batter is partially cakey but also slightly reminiscent of clafoutis, that eggy batter pudding well-loved in France.  The buttery topping adds a slight crispness around the edges of the cake and a rich decadent flavour, almost caramel-like. 

Buttery crispness, mmm!

 Served in a pool of custard.

Edited to add that this is also delicious servedwith half-fat crème fraîche. 

Pasteis de Nata

In March this year we spent a week in Lisbon, the beautiful capital of Portugal.  It was our first trip abroad with Ted, and an all-round success, we loved it.  True to form a big part of the holiday's success was the food involved!  We were staying in a self-catering apartment (for ease with a baby) so cooked for ourselves every evening.  I don't think we managed to eat a huge amount of 'traditional' Portuguese food, as Rob isn't really a seafood fan, and neither of us fancied tackling one of the slabs of salt-cod we saw for sale everywhere, but one typical local delight that we did eat rather a lot of was Pasteis de Nata, Portuguese custard tarts.

We would buy a 4-pack of these every day from the local supermarket...  one each for morning coffee, one each for afternoon tea!

We also took every opportunity to have these when out and about in the city.  This was a very famous cafe in Belem which specialised in these pastries.

Pasteis de Nata are a far cry from the custard tarts that we know and love in England.  English custard tarts are made with short, sweet pastry, sprinkled with nutmeg, then cooked slowly to set the eggy custard to a gentle wobble.  Portuguese custard tarts are made with flaky puff pastry, and blasted at super-high heat to puff the pastry and scorch the custard within.  I'd heard that it was tricky to recreate these delights at home as you can't really get a domestic oven to the requisite heat, but I thought I'd give them a try anyway.

I have a couple of Facebook friends who are also big fans of Pasteis de Nata (hi Helen and Tina!), and stumbled upon a discussion about them in which a Portuguese friend of Helen's posted a link to the following recipe on Leite's Culinaria.  I figured that as she was Portuguese this was as good a recommendation as any, so this is what I used.

*Lazy Cook Alert*...  I couldn't be bothered to make my own puff pastry (hangs head in shame) so used a ready-made sheet of it.  I'm actually glad that I did as making the custard was quite a palaver, requiring sugar syrup, a sugar thermometer, and rather vague instructions such as 'stir for a minute until very warm but not hot' (note: I erred on the side of cool, not wishing to scramble the eggs); and let's face it, my baking is usually time-restricted to fit in with Ted's midday nap.  I just wouldn't have had time to make the pastry too.  If you choose to have a go at this recipe, bear in mind that for this amount of custard you will need TWO sheets of puff pastry.  I only had one, so now have half the custard in a jug in the fridge waiting for me to buy another sheet to use it up.  So either buy two, or halve the custard recipe.

You create the signature 'swirly' base of the tarts by rolling the pastry into a log, then cutting sections and squidging them into the holes of the muffin tin.  This bit was fun, but take it from me, you need to grease the tin first...  oops!

It was NOT easy to extract the tarts from the tin.  So much for non-stick!

 Lots of soaking required.

 The recipe states that they need to cook for 8-9 minutes, but I found that after this time the pastry was still uncooked so I put them in for another 3 minutes.  I then removed them from the tin (with some difficulty!) and placed the tarts back into the hot oven in order to crisp up the bases and sides a little more.  Perhaps you wouldn't need to do this if your oven was a bit hotter, but mine only goes up to 250 degrees, not the 290 the recipe requires.

And the results?  A little rustic perhaps, but pretty darn authentic as far as we are concerned!   Being mini-muffin-sized it's dangerously easy to eat several at one sitting.  As we found in Lisbon, these are at their nicest when warmed slightly in the oven before eating, and you can add an optional sprinkling of cinnamon or icing sugar if you choose.

Swirly base (not a soggy bottom in sight!)

I'll definitely try these again in the future, greasing the tin next time, and also perhaps filling them slightly less full to avoid quite so much overflow.  This half-recipe made 23 mini tarts, but I will cut the next sheet of puff pastry into only 20 (the full recipes says it makes 40) as with some of my tarts the pastry was a little thin. 

Delicioso!

Rhubarb and Custard Cake

I realised with a jolt last week that I hadn't looked at Pinterest for weeks, months actually.  For someone who has been known to fritter away hours of the day 'pinning' fabulous cooking/decorating/craft/clothing ideas, this is quite a change... But I've decided that I can only maintain one internet addiction during Ted's nap-times, and Facebook has won that competition!  However, some 'pins' have stuck in my mind, and when I saw some lovely pink stalks of Hampshire rhubarb in the shops last week, I had a sudden recollection of a beautiful looking recipe that I had seen and pinned, so I bought them.

And here it is:

Not only does the cake look gorgeous, I love the way that this blogger (eat, little bird) has presented it, so appealing.

Anyway, I set about making it as soon as I got home.  The cake batter is extremely thick but I suppose that this helps to 'support' the thick layer of custard that you put into the middle.  I also stewed the rhubarb that I had leftover from patterning the top of the cake, and put a fruity layer in the pan on top of the custard.  I ended up using my dampened hands to mould the top layer of cake batter so I could just place it in the tin on top of the custard and rhubarb. 

It looked beautiful before baking...  but not quite so attractive afterwards!!

However, as we all know, it's the taste that counts, and this tasted...  OK.  If I made it again I'd definitely make a couple of changes: 

- Add an extra egg to the cake batter.  It's a very dense cake and I think some more liquid would loosen it up a bit and make the cake a bit lighter. 

- Not make the custard filling too thick.  I made the rookie error of using a giant tablespoon to measure out the custard powder when I was making the filling.  I should have used a proper 15ml measure.  My fault.

- Don't over-bake it.  Again, my fault, but in my defence it's quite hard to tell if it's done as a cake-tester will inevitably hit the custard filling and come up looking like it has uncooked batter on it.

My extra rhubarb layer was a good plan, as the sticks on top just aren't enough - but I love rhubarb!

I have just seen a variation of this cake on Facebook, where apple has been used in place of the rhubarb, with excellent results.  I think I will definitely try that in the Autumn when we are always awash with apples.

I'm glad I tried it, but will refine it a little when I bake it again.

Custard Cookies

I love anything with custard.  In fact, I consider custard to be a pudding in itself!  During my first year at university when I was in catered accommodation I remember that there always used to be a large 'cauldron' of custard to accompany the hot pudding (often something utterly bizarre such as pineapple and coconut crumble).  Forget the wacky crumbles, I'd usually just have custard, greedily ladled into a bowl (thank heavens for self-service). 

And yes, I do eat the skin!

So when I saw a magazine article which included a recipe for 'Soft Custard Cookies' I felt that I had to give them a try.  The recipe is from the January 2010 edition of Good Housekeeping, and comes from TV chef Phil Vickery. The custard takes the place of egg in the recipe and the result is a soft, almost cakey cookie with a pronounced flavour of vanilla from both the custard and the white chocolate (I also used vanilla sugar and added 1/2 a tsp of vanilla extract - I love vanilla).

The recipe calls for 100g of Bird's Custard, made-up and cooled.  This obviously means that if you had custard leftover from a meal you could use that, but I made up a batch specially, putting the rest into ramekins to set solid for our pudding last night.  Hot custard is lovely, but cold set custard is gorgeous!

The recipe is as follows:

125g (4oz) unsalted butter, softened
125 (4oz) caster sugar (or vanilla sugar)
100g (3 1/2oz) white chocolate, finely chopped (and do chop it finely otherwise the dough will be hard to slice)
200g self-raising flour (I ended up using 250g)
100g (3 1/2oz) cold Bird's custard, made to packet instructions

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and creamy.

Add the custard, chocolate and flour and mix well.

Form the dough into a sausage shape, 5cm diameter, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.  (***Note - the dough was way too sticky for me to do this so I added an extra 50g of flour.  It was still very soft, but manageable***)

Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Unwrap the dough and slice into 1.5cm thick cookies, and place onto a greased or lined baking tray.  Leave room between them as they will spread.  (***I got 20 cookies from this mix and used 2 baking trays***)

Bake for about 15 minutes until the cookies are beginning to turn a light golden brown around the edges.
Leave on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool fully.

I had never heard of using custard in a biscuit recipe before, and an online search showed that it is somewhat of a speciality of Phil Vickery.  I couldn't find this particular recipe online, but did find a similar one of his: White Chocolate and Cardamom Soft Custard Cookies.  I can imagine that this would be a great flavour combination and one I'm now keen to try.