Coffee and pop tarts

For your gastronomic pleasure, I present the Offspring’s home made apple pop tarts!

And one of my beloved lustreware cup-and-saucer sets:

Oddly enough, it wasn’t until today that I noticed this set is made in Japan as well:

I really have had a love affair with Japan for most of my life!

And now for the pop tarts. This is not a hard and fast recipe so you’ll have to adjust the quantities to suit your own tastes.

The pastry is plain old, shop bought, frozen shortcrust. You should be able to use flaky or puff pastry as well. It just so happened that shortcrust was what we had in the freezer.

The Offspring allowed the sheets to thaw and then cut each one into quarters. One quarter for each pop tart.

The filling is where things get truly yummy. The apples are Granny Smiths but any tart, cooking apple will do. Sweet apples just don’t have enough flavour.

After washing the apples, the Offspring simply cut out the core and chopped the apple into bite-sized chunks. No peeling required. The skin actually adds to the flavour.

The apple went into a saucepan with some brown sugar [suit your own tastes], a lot of cinnamon, 1/2 a teaspoon of allspice and…a splash of champagne. The champagne is not mandatory, but like the pastry, it was what we had left over from the Un-Christmas dinner last year.

And before you ask, the Offspring doesn’t drink and I don’t like champagne so cooking is a great way of not wasting a perfectly good bottle of booze. I also use it in my Bolognese because I’ve been out of Shiraz for months. The champagne is ‘dry’ so it works pretty well.

The trick to making the apple is not to overcook it. Any liquid you add, whether it be wine or water, should only be enough to stop the apples from burning before they release their own juices. You really do not want to make apple sauce! As soon as the apples are cooked but still firm, remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool.

Preheat the oven to moderate [about 375F or 180C].

To assemble the pop tarts, place a generous spoonful of the cold apple in the middle of the square of pastry, moisten the edges with a little water [so the pastry will stick to itself], fold over, removing as much air as you can [without going insane about it], and press the edges closed.

Make a few small holes in the top of the pop tarts with the point of a sharp knife. This is to allow the steam to escape. Otherwise you might end up with exploding pop tarts. 🙂

Place the pop tarts on a baking tray and glaze with a little warm apricot jam [optional]. Bake in the middle of a moderate oven for about 10 minutes. The exact timing will depend upon your oven.

When the pop tarts are golden brown, remove from the oven and transfer to a cake rack to cool a little.

Warning: the apple inside these tarts is VERY hot. We discovered this the hard way…;)

The pop tarts will keep in the fridge for about three days, and we’ve found that they reheat beautifully. Just pop them back in the over for about 5 minutes.

Enjoy,
Meeks

p.s. I’m trying hard to get back into writing so I won’t be posting as much for a while. Don’t worry though, we’re both quite healthy!

#recipe: Purple carrot cake

I owe this recipe to my sister-in-law, Victoria. Thank you!

The cake was delicious as Victoria first baked it, but I think my small changes have made it a fraction healthier. But then, who cares about healthy?

Where I have strayed slightly from the ingredients or quantities, I have given the original ingredients or quantities in brackets afterwards.

Let’s do it!

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup raw or caster sugar
• ½ cup oil* – peanut or olive is fine [1 cup]
• 1 cup self raising flour plus 1/3 cup almond meal [1/3 cup wholemeal flour]
• 1/2 teaspoon Bi-carbonate of soda [1 1/3 teaspoons]
• 1 tablespoon plain yoghurt [optional in the original recipe]
• 1 1/3 teaspoons cinnamon – i.e. LOTS!
• 2 cups peeled and grated purple carrots – about 3 big ones [approx. 2 big orange carrots]
• [optional] ½ cup sultanas tossed in flour
• [optional] 1 cup chopped walnuts

* 1/2 a cup of oil will result in a lighter, drier, fluffier carrot cake. If you like yours more traditional, experiment with the amount of oil you add, bearing in mind that 1 cup is probably the maximum, while 1/2 a cup is the minimum.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150 C [Fanbake] or 300 – 325 F
2. Lightly grease and flour a 19 cm ringform cake tin
3. Break whole eggs into the mixing bowl and beat until frothy
4. Continue beating as you add 1 cup of sugar to the eggs, a bit at a time. Beat well between each addition. The egg mixture should become light in colour, thick and fluffy.
5. Continue beating as you add the oil.
6. Remove the bowl from the mixer and sift the flour, bi-carb and cinnamon onto the egg mix.
7. Fold in.
8. Peel and grate the carrots just before adding them to the cake to stop them from going ‘greenish’ during cooking.
9. Fold in the grated carrots
10. Fold in the yoghurt
11. Pour the cake mix into the prepared tin and sprinkle with almond flakes.
12. Place in the centre of the preheated oven and bake for approx.. 1 hour.
13. At the end of the hour [and not before!] test the cake with a skewer. The skewer should be a little greasy but not wet or sticky.
14. Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to stand in the tin for about 5 minutes.
15. Turn the cake out onto a wire cooling rack.

Serve at room temperature with cream, ice cream or just plain. Or if you’re like us, eat as soon as it comes out of the pan to enjoy the sweet, slightly toffee-like crunch of the outer ‘skin’. Once the cake cools, the skin loses it’s crunch.

The Offspring and I found no difference in taste using purple vs orange carrots, and as you can see from the photo, the purple carrots do not turn the whole cake purple so you can serve it without your guests ever knowing it’s a ‘healthy’ option. 😉

Bon appetit!

Meeks

Upside down apple cake – a recipe

This recipe is for Anneb54 who expressed an interest in upside down peach cake. Apologies Anne, I had to use apples instead of peaches but you can easily substitute fresh peaches once they come into season again.

I’ve had this recipe for years, and it has remained one of my all-time favourites because it’s so easy to make, and because I always have the ingredients on hand. Okay, let’s do it!

Ingredients

2 large Fuji applies

1/2 a cup of caster sugar

4 teaspoons of cinnamon sugar – 3 tspns of sugar to 1 tspn of cinnamon [optional]

100 gm of butter [unsalted or salt reduced] – at room temperature.

2 eggs beaten

1 cup self-raising flour

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C [or 350 F]. [I use my fan-bake setting and drop the temperature a little to compensate].

2. Grease a 4 cup pie dish, or 8 inch ring-form tin. I always use the ring-form because I find it so much easier to work with. I put aluminum foil over the base plate and close the ‘ring’ around it to get a nice tight seal. Then I butter the two together. The foil will make it easier to decant the cake once it’s baked. [Oh, and don’t be stingy with the butter!]

3. Peel the apples and slice them thinly [leaving out the core of course]. Arrange the slices over the base of your baking dish and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar [or just plain sugar if you prefer].

4. Cream the butter and caster sugar with an electric mixer. [If you forget to let the butter come to room temperature first, cut it into small chunks before trying to cream it with the sugar].

5. Add the beaten egg to the butter in about 4 go’s, beating the mix well between each addition. [At this point the mix could ‘curdle’ – i.e. begin to look granular – so I sprinkle about a teaspoon of the flour in with each addition of egg. The flour stops the curdling].

6. When all the egg has been added to the mix, sift the rest of the flour over the mix and fold in by hand. [If you’re lazy like me you can skip the sifting part without any dramas].

7. Spread the cake mix over the apple and bake for 35 – 40 minutes, or until golden brown and a skewer through the middle comes out clean. [If the tip of the skewer feels ‘sticky’ leave the cake a little longer].

8. Take the cake out of the oven. Gently run a knife around the inside of the pan, and then undo the ring-form. You will now have the cake sitting on just the base plate. Take a cake rack [cooling stand] and place it on top of the cake. Hold the rack in place with one hand as you carefully flip the cake over. Now hold the base plate by the aluminum foil and gently lift away. You should be left with the fruit on top.

Storing this cake is never a problem as we tend to eat it within two days. However once the cake has cooled, you should cover it with cling wrap.

And there you have your upside down apple cake! Serve hot or cold, with cream or ice-cream. or just plain. Trust me, this buttery cake is more than good enough to eat plain. And think of the calories you’d be saving. 😉

Enjoy!

Meeks