Tag: what to do with lots of apples

Toffee and Apple Butter Crumble

When I was at school we studied the English Romantic poet, John Keats. To this day, I can still recite many of his odes and whenever my friend J and I get together, something will trigger something in our heads and we will burst into recitation – either sonnets from Shakespeare or poetry or even psalms and verses from the Bible. It must be hard wired into our brains now and it still makes us laugh that after all these decades, the words our teachers drummed into our heads when we were little schoolgirls, still remain. It seemed so hard at the time to learn everything and now it seems we can’t forget anything! Makes us pretty good at quizzes, of course, and a source of irritation to our husbands as they weren’t taught like us Grammar School girls and they roll their eyes when we go into our synchronised recitation mode at the least provocation or reminder. We can’t help it. It just happens automatically. We must have been terrified of our teachers.

 Keats, in his ode “To Autumn” called this the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”  and he was right. The apple trees are bending under the weight of the apples and this morning, the first of the real autumn mists filled the valley below us. What might have seemed boring and irrelevant to our teenaged minds is now appreciated and I found myself reciting the ode as I made coffee for breakfast and gazed out of the window.

Mists certainly… mellow fruitfulness? Yes. We still had such a lot of apples from our brief foraging trip and I needed to use them.

I was going to be cooking a meal that evening for a visitor from South Africa and another colleague. It wasn’t going to be a fancy dinner but it had to be good. I wanted to show what traditional British cooking was like and prove that it is delicious. What better for dessert, I thought, than Apple Crumble? Perfectly British and perfectly delicious.

Last time I made crumble, I made Toffee Apple Crumble and it was delicious – the addition of fudge made an ordinary apple crumble something special. This time, I thought, I would use fudge again but also add the Apple Butter I made at the weekend. That would add in another layer of appley lusciousness to the crumble…..

So, I got in from work and peeled some apples. Normally I use good sized apples and allow one per person. That normally works out about right.

These were my foraged apples – not quite so big as ones from a managed orchard, so I decided 6 would do. Also, I am rather greedy and I was hoping for leftovers the next day.

Peeled, cored and chopped, I put them in a large baking dish and sprinkled the juice of half a lemon over the bits to stop them getting too brown.

A sprinkling of golden granulated sugar over the top would balance things nicely and help make delicious juices (and I do mean, by the way, just a sprinkling. More sweetness will come from the fudge)

The fudge needed to be cut up too…

And the apple butter I made? Look how it has set… it can be cut into slices, just like real butter. Apple butter is just apples cooked slowly until their natural sugars caramelise, which is why it is a deep golden brown, and spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves) stirred in and cooked with the apples.

I layered some slices over the apple, knowing that when everything baked, the apple butter would melt over the apple pieces and that lovely spiced apple mix would be perfect in the crumble.

Next, the fudge pieces were scattered over the top.

The crumble mix is simplicity itself – 300g of plain flour, 200g of sugar and 175g of butter.

Making the crumble topping is really easy – just rub the mix through your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs. It doesn’t take long.

Then scatter the crumble mix over the prepared fruit and fudge.

Don’t pack it down, just shake the bowl from side to let the crumbs settle round the fruit, fudge and apple butter.

And then all you have to do is put it in the oven at 180 degrees C/350 degrees F for 40 minutes or so.

Oh, the smell of it as it cooked – there was the sweet buttery smell of the crumble itself and the sharpness of the apples and the spicy mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger from the apple butter.

And what was it like?

It was lovely. So lovely I forgot to take a picture of it as it came out of the oven. I just dug into it and served it up.

Served with a great dollop of extra thick double cream.

It was eaten and seconds were requested. Our South African friend said she had not wanted to go home without trying a hot English pudding, so that was good. I suppose our traditional hot puddings are famous, and rightly so.

It was a perfect pudding, it really was. Toffee Apple Crumble was excellent but adding Apple Butter as well? That made it truly delicious.

And there are no leftovers.

Apple Butter

This autumn (and I know it is still late summer really, but it is the 1st September and it was misty when I got up and it is just starting to feel autumnal) well, this autumn the apple crops are amazing. Every apple tree seems to be laden with fruit. Friends who drove up to see us, last weekend,  said the roads from Oxfordshire were being pelted with fruit as they passed. So many apples, and all of them so ripe they just fell from the trees with the faintest encouragement or vibration from passing traffic. I often wonder about the roadside apple trees… are they successful seedlings, all grown up from a thrown away apple core as people went past, or are they the remnants of a long ago cottage garden by the road? I think they are, perhaps, from cores as the trees are so tall and straight. Any old apple tree in a garden tends to be gnarled and battered. It’s nice to think of nature triumphing from a discarded core, isn’t it?

But there’s so many of them! And no one is doing anything with them. What a waste! Mind you, it’s thinking of things to do with this huge crop……

Today’s apples, I decided, were going to be made into apple butter.

I’d read about this for years but not really explored what it was. I had a half notion it was apples and butter (which sound rather nice, actually) but when I started searching, I discovered that it was just apples, spices and a little bit of sugar, boiled down and thickened during the long slow cooking to make a preserved apple spread. It spreads, apparently, like butter when it is done, which is how it got its name. Wikipedia explained a bit more, as did Charles, a friend in America, who told me that his father -in- law and the rest of his townsfolk gather to make apple butter in huge quantities in the town square. The smell is amazing, apparently, spreading out from the town square. Historically the idea came from Europe and was taken to America by immigrants and it is mainly in America that it is made now.

Well, it is going to be made in Nottingham today. I have fruit (plenty of fruit) and time to do it. All it takes is apples and spices. Something that we can have on toast, or cook with later in the year when all the apples have either fallen or rotted. Something healthy and tasty. A dairy free spread from free fruit? Sounds good, doesn’t it?

It is simplicity itself. All you have to do is quarter the apples, leaving the skin on and the core in – this will add pectin to the apples and help it set. Only cut out and damaged bits of apple and do remove any spiders or caterpillars that you may  have brought home with you.

There were about 3 lbs of apples in my large pan and I poured in a cup of water to help them cook down. In the long slow cooking that follows the water will evaporate. Some recipes says use a cup of cider vinegar as it adds a tang to the end product but I didn’t have any, so water it was.

The apples started to cook very quickly – maybe a couple of minutes and you could see them soften. It is important to keep stirring so they don’t burn.

After about 15 minutes or so, the apples had reduced to a soft mush, like apple sauce.

One of the things I was given from my aunt’s house was a Mouli food mill which is ideal for this next bit.

As you have cooked the skin, the core and the pips as well as the apple, you need to get the bits out and just have the smooth cooked apple left to transform into the apple butter. I used the finest plate and started to mill the apple puree.

If you haven’t got a  Mouli then you can do this next bit by pushing the fruit through a sieve. The Mouli is quick, though, so it could be a good thing to buy.

You can see how smooth the milled apple is and all the hard bits are left behind.

A beautiful, smooth apple puree.

I tasted the apple and it was sweetly appleish but quite sharp so 1 cup of sugar was added and stirred in.

The next part was to add the spices…. most of the recipes I looked at suggested nutmeg so I added half a teaspoon or so into the mix (thanks, Bear for taking the photo)

And all recipes said to add my favourite spice cinnamon – 1 whole teaspoon.

A pinch of ground cloves (yes, you can buy it ground but I couldn’t find my jar, so I ground up a couple or so of cloves with my trusty pestle and mortar and scooped up the finest bits)  and half a teaspoon of ground ginger were stirred in as well.

And then I started to stir. The heat was turned down to the bare minimum and I stirred.

Then I went for a nap and left the Bear to stir. So he stirred. All the descritptions of apple butter said that it had to be stirred constantly but we managed a stir every few minutes as the pan sat there on the lowest heat.

Anyway, it didn’t burn and we kept stirring. The apartment smelled gorgeous. Apples, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg  all mixed together is a truly delicious aroma. Even if you don’t want to make it  to eat then you  should make it just for the smell.

The recipes suggested that constant stirring at a slightly higher temperature would have the apple butter ready in a couple of hours.

We did it at a very low temperature for four or so hours… stirring it round until it looked like this

The sugars in the apple had caramelised and the puree had gone a lovely rich and golden brown. When I dragged the spoon through it, it was thick enough to leave a trail through the puree.

When I lifted a spoonfull of it up, it didn’t run off the spoon… so that meant, according to everything I had read, that it was ready.

It didn’t look to me like butter, but there you go, I’d got this far, I’d just have to keep going.

I’d sterilised jars by boiling water in them in the oven and I spooned in the apple butter

It looked brown and still not in the least bit buttery.

By now though, it was getting late so I let it cool and then put it in the fridge overnight.

What a transformation! It had set into a smooth and delicious spread…. yes, it was buttery in texture!

I’d done it!

It tastes delicious and on hot toast it is a perfect breakfast. It can keep in the fridge for three or four weeks (if it last that long) and for months in a properly sealed and sterilised jar.

What I am intrigued with are further recipes that I found – apple butter cakes, cookies or biscuits anyone?

Get out there, collect some apples and start making apple butter!

21 September – Since I posted this, a Canadian friend told me of a quicker way of making apple butter – you can find it on her page – Lorraine, another T.O.B. Cook

Foraging again – apples, plums and more apples

Today is the last Bank Holiday of the year in England so we decided to make the most of it. A extra day added to our weekend – what bliss!

The weather is good so we decided to go looking for more fruit.. and what fruit we found. We live on the top of a hill and at the back of where we live is a lovely park. Parts of it are overgrown – so much so that the apple trees appear to be fruiting blackberries as well. The brambles reach up and entwine through the branches so that blackberries are dangling down from ten feet or so.

Apples  weighed down the branches of the trees, deep in the undergrowth. One bump against the trunk and the apples fell down, bumping against branches and disappearing into the tangled brambles and grasses onto the ground. It’s so overgrown that I couldn’t even see them after they landed.

Within minutes we had a bag full. We had to ignore all the huge, fat, shining blackberries because I just don’t have the time to deal with them today and there’s no point picking them if you can’t cook them the same day.

As we walked back round to our apartment, I saw something drop to the path in front of me. It was a fat, ripe plum. I must have walked by that tree a hundred times before and not noticed it was a plum tree. In my defence, it is in the shrubbery, lining the path. Maybe it’s just that everything is fruiting this summer. Trees at home that I know have not fruited in 20 years are now covered in apples.

Anyway, I didn’t need anymore encouragement than that – I handed my bag to the Bear and dived into the shrubbery to get to the plum tree. Before I knew it, there were a dozen juicy Victoria plums falling first into my hands and secondly into the forage bag.

We had to stop. I didn’t think there was going to be so much fruit but with quarter of an hour we had two bags full.

The plums were large and sweet – definitely part of a fruit garden at one point

The apples were various sizes and what I call “ear biter” apples – you know, the sweetly sharp ones that make you squeak with delight when you bite into them as they sort of tweak you behind your ears? I love apples like that.  We seemed to have brought home more than we thought. I also brought home several small spiders and a caterpillar or two. No wonder I was feeling itchy after crawling through those bushes.

And out on the balcony I had another apple tree, a Greensleeves which is also a sharp and crisp apple.

I was going to have do a lot of apple cooking.

This coming week I am going to make Apple Butter, an apple cake and Toffee Apple Crumble as we are having a guest for dinner one night. And there were plums to cook as well….so much fruit and so little time.

First will be the Apple Butter, something I have wanted to make for a long time. There’s no butter in it… just apples, spices and some sugar, cooked until the natural sugars in the apple caramelise and turn it a soft brown, leaving it soft and smooth, (which is why it is called butter) perfect to spread on bread. What a great way to use up the apple bounty. It preserves them, too,  making a delicious treat for later in the year. 

I’d better get a move on, then… just as well this a holiday!