Autumn and Baked Toffee’d Apples

Autumn greets our very own ‘Whomping Acer, a Japanese Maple tree who will soon look like a newly shorn lamb. Her beauteous flaming branches dropped bare over night.  She then has a stark look of disdain you can almost hear her say. “Talk to the branch honey, I’m sleeping until Spring.  See if I care that you drape me with ya silly fatty bird balls through the winter – Zzzzz”!

  

She flounces to her slumber in a flurry of leaves that look like a discarded, claret coloured, petticoat and recedes within her depths. That’s the last of her until she decides its Spring again and I look forward to that immeasurably.  She will look to the world as if she’s had a night on the tiles and is left with her drawers ‘round her ankles. Stoically she will stand stark naked with nowhere to hide her blushes from abruptly flouting her undergarments.

  

Snotty the Snail and Skiddy the Slug (currently available in ‘on trend’ day glow colours) will disappear soon as will Froggy, Toady also Reggie the Edgy Hedgehog.

Badger and Foxy will hopefully be bumbling about, they know me to be a soft touch.

 

  

I don’t take to chilly times at all well, I certainly don’t take to damp dank and wet chilly times, full stop.

I do lurk and luxuriate in my kitchen, however. I creek about like a well weathered battle ship looking for sunnier climes in your lovely blogs and my walls of books,  loosing myself in a mindset where upon I become as keen as an adventurous unleashed, six-week old puppy.

  

We will ice cream through the seasons and festivities with more than a soupçon of other goodies, gifts, eats and treats to make and share.

I have prepared a few posts including a most unusual apple pie, but just wanted to start Autumn with a great big thank you hug for one and all.

Your time and kind consideration are hugely appreciated. x

Baked Toffee’d Apples

Serve one apple per person:

2 Crisp Bramley Baking apples.

Core the apples with a corer, rinse and dry the apples and the corer.

Make a score line in the skin, around the centre of the apple which will stop it from disintegrating.

Combine:

2-3 desserts spoons of soft brown sugar,

a decent pinch of ground cinnamon,

a shy pinch of ground cumin

a table-spoon of finely chopped ginger in syrup

and combine with Bourbon or Rum to make a firm paste (or some juice from a fresh orange)

Form a cylinder of the sugar paste in the corer and replace the corer into the apple. Remove the utensil and leave the sugary core within the apple. Use a thick slice of the ginger to seal the top. In your cooking dish add a few drops of water beneath each apple or cook on parchment baking paper to stop it sticking.  Drizzle over some the ginger syrup just before placing in them into a medium hot oven. The tops will burnish from the syrup, omit if this is not for you.

They will take about 30 minutes.

  

Hello Autumn…

x