Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

We are delighted to wake this blog from a few restorative weeks of hibernation with a guest post from Salada. Her other posts can be enjoyed here and here.

No muffin recipes appear in the VCBT list. Honestly, I checked.  Patricia H White is, assuming she’s still with us, an American who moved to England in the 1960’s.  This book was first published in 1975, and encourages the tradition of taking a bit of trouble with your gifts, or DIY as it’s known.  The recipes are divided into eight categories such as preserves, potted foods, sweetmeats and baked goods.  Ms White gives advice on packaging and storage, and how long the produce will last.

This recipe looks like a standard muffin mixture.  Commercial muffins nowadays have expanded to massive proportions, but these seem to come from a more frugal era.  Apple and cinnamon is a classic flavour match.

Apple Pudding-Pie

Of course I made this. I have a ready supply of apples and LOOK AT THE NAME:

Apple or peach pudding-pie or pie-pudding, no. 2, Yankee style

Amazing.

Recipe
Sweet milk, 1 cup
1 egg
Butter, 1 tablespoon, heaping
Baking powder,  1 teaspoon
Flour 1 cup or sufficient to make a rather thick batter (‘batter’ means like cake, better to handle with a spoon or easy to pour  out)
A little salt
Tart juicy apples to fill half an earthen pudding dish

Herman the German Friendship Cake

Initially I had no plans to blog this as it’s not from a book, but after live-tweeting its assembly I thought I might as well. I remember my mother being given some of this starter about 25 years ago and I (who didn’t have to stir it daily or move it when doing other things in the kitchen), loved the resulting cake. The internet seems a little conflicted as to the origins – certainly Amish Friendship Bread is very similar.

Anyway, I was very pleased when a friend gave me some Herman starter in a yoghurt pot, in a Liberty’s bag, along with the strict advice that it was Day 3, and a piece of paper stating:

Spicy Apple Fritters

Elly and I were very kindly invited to talk about the blog and do some live cooking recently by the lovely A Playful Day for her podcast (naturally the whole thing is well worth a listen, but if you’re particularly eager to hear us we appear around 29 minutes in). We cooked Spicy Apple Fritters from the TREX cookbook (which doesn’t appear to have a date of publication). The fritters turned out to be surprisingly tasty and looked like this:

Clootie Dumpling

Happy St Stephen’s Day! Actually, I imagine most of you will be reading this in a couple of day’s time when you need a break from your Christmas present books or stumbling here in a couple of months when you are looking for a suitable recipe for ballast-food.

I spent Christmas day with friends this year, a delightful experience, with just a few pangs for family rituals. I brought a contribution to the main course, offered to make custard and in a flurry of last-minute organisation, volunteered to cook clootie dumpling which several of us had missed the opportunity to have when on holiday in Scotland in the summer. On that trip, I had bought Traditional Scotttish Cookery by Margaret Fairlie, first published in 1972 by Hale Books, in Inverness Museum. I’ve tried to find out more about Ms Fairlie, but the internet is only giving me information on the identically named eminent gynaecologist and first woman to hold a professorial chair in Scotland. So if you know any more about Margaret Fairlie, cookbook writer, do comment and let me know.

Pommes à la Crème

Yet another apple recipe. I’ve never fried fruit, nor have I flamed booze before. I was quite nervous about this, all the other times I’ve had fire in my kitchen, it’s been unintentional and thus rather panic-inducing. Still, I thoroughly dampened a tea-towel, put it in arm’s reach of the cooker and steeled myself. (I don’t have any pets or small children, but we should all practise safe flambé.)

Norwegian Apple Pie

This blog is turning into a real life version of Apple Pigs. Still, I’m enjoying all the apple-y goodness, even if you’re getting bored and if you are getting bored, I apologise, but I was given 15 immense apples and have two more apple recipes planned. When I was pondering what next to do, I remembered that Scandinavian Cooking (Beryl Frank 1976) had several recipes for apple cake. (In fact it has three apple cakes and three apple puddings. The book was obviously written before Scandinavian governments decided to intervene in the health of their citizens by cutting beef and dairy subsidies and raising berry farming subsidies.) This one appealed to me because it’s simple, it includes lots of nuts (yum) and it doesn’t require butter, which is great for when you want to bake something, but don’t want to use up all your butter and then have to get properly dressed and go out and buy some more.

Double Apple Salad

‘Cooking means carefulness, inventiveness, willingness and readiness of appliance. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness, French art, Arabian hospitality’ These are Ruskin’s words, as true and inspired today as they were when he wrote them eighty-five years ago.’

So begins The Blender Book by Gwen Robyns, first published by Hamish Hamilton for Thorn Domestic Appliances in 1971.

Apple Crisp

One of the sweet things about writing this blog is the extent to which my nearest and dearest enable me by reading, taste-testing and buying me new and exciting old books to try. Today’s recipe is taken from Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two:

Dutch Apple Pie

Guest post! Today, seasoned commenter Salada takes us through a classic apple pie. Due to the unusual weather, the apple harvest is excellent  this year, so shop prices are reasonable and if you’re really lucky, a friend, relative or Freecycler will give you some windfalls for free.

Just a bit late for pie month!  The first apple pie of the season, made
approximately to Barbara Hammond’s Dutch Apple Pie  (a double crust plate pie) recipe from Cooking Explained (1963 edition).