Small round teapot made by Tatsuya Hattori. I could not resist its cute appearance a few years back. The surface of the teapot feels like suede. The tiny pastel cups, very much like eggshells, were made by a young nordic ceramicist Saara Kaatra.

The cream and crisps do take a bit of extra effort but I think it is worth it. The apple crisp is like candy. And the cream, good enough to eat on its own, not sickly sweet or fatty.

Caramelised apple cupcakes


Caramelised apples
4 apples
40g sugar
20g butter

Cake batter
120g flour
120g sugar
2 tsp baking powder
40g butter
120ml milk
1 egg

Old fashioned butter cream
200g butter
2 heaped tablespoons of flour
100ml hot milk
vanilla paste
70g sugar

Apple crisps
apple slices
citric acid
sugar
water


First, prepare the apples. Peel them and cut in half. Now, you can shave a slice off each half, for the apple crisps, but if you've got more apples than just four then you can do it later. Carve out the cores. Put about fourty grams of sugar and twenty grams of butter into a saucepan and let it melt.

Then turn the heat up a notch and place the apple halves into the butter caramel, let bubble for about five minutes then flip the apples over and let the other side caramelise as well. Set aside.

For the cakes, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder and butter until it resembles wet sand. Then add the milk and combine gently.
Whisk the egg lightly in a separate bowl before adding it to the batter.
Divide batter between eight regular size (5cm bottom dm) muffin cases. Slide apple pieces into the batter and bake at 180C for 20 to 25 minutes.

For the apple crisps, shave extremely thin apple slices from the centre of a firm peeled apple. It is best to use a mandolin slicer or some other slicing machine. In a small saucepan combine two parts water to one part sugar with a pinch of citric acid.
Let it come to a simmer and cook the apple slices in this simple syrup for a good five minutes before laying them on a sheet of baking paper and drying in the oven at 110C for 2 hours.

For the butter cream, melt 100g butter in a saucepan, add two heaped tablespoons of flour and mix until combined. Heat 100ml milk in the microwave and then gradually pour onto the roux, whisking to prevent any lumps. Now add a teaspoon of vanilla paste and two-thirds of the sugar.
Let it cook for about five minutes, until it thickens. Set aside and cover. It has to cool down to add the rest f the butter.
Cream the other 100g of butter with the remaining one-third of sugar and mix into cooled down cream.

Fill a pastry bag with the cream and place in the fridge to make it harden, buttercream needs to chill after a day at work. Pile a good amount of cream on top of every little cake and garnish with an apple crisp. If you have any caramel sauce left over, then drizzle it on top.

I have been very busy, baking!
The rush will continue for yet another week.

Apple, rhubarb and raspberry pies, baked in small pots.

A spur of the moment poppy seed gugelhupf for breakfast. And a new mug!

Apple, rhubarb and raspberry pies

For the shortcrust pastry
100g flour
50g butter, room temperature
1 tbsp water
salt and sugar

3 apples
1 tbsp butter
about 200g rhubarb, finely sliced
about 125g raspberries
sugar
cornflour

Sieve the flour into a bowl. Add a pinch of sugar and salt. Cut butter into cubes and add to the bowl.
Work the butter into the flour, while trying to keep it light, until the texture resembles breadcrumbs.
Sprinkle some cold water into the bowl and mix through with a fork. Use your hands to bring the pastry together into a ball. The sides of the bowl should come clean.
Wrap the pastry in cling film and let rest in the fridge.

Clean, peel and core the apples. Heat a saucepan over medium-high heat and melt a spoonful of butter with about 3 spoonfuls of sugar. Heat until a light caramel starts to form. Cut the apples into medium dice (parmentier) and toss into the saucepan. Turn the heat down a notch and cook until apples start to soften, remove from the heat.
Toss the rhubarb slices and raspberries in a mixture of sugar and cornflour. The cornflour is needed to bind the juices.
Bring out the pastry and roll it into a thickness of about 3mm. Cut into four fitting circles, make a hole in the centre of each. Take four ramekins* and fill with the fruit mixture, cover with the pastry lids and bake in the oven at 190°C for 20 minutes.

Serve with custard or ice cream.

*When using larger pots like I did, it will only yield three.

Taken on 11.11.11 at 11:11.
Cheers!


I woke up to a white frosty world yesterday. The grass, neighbour's rooftop, hedges, our still blossoming roses - all covered with frozen mist. We were blessed with first subzero temperatures of the season. It looks magnificent every time and I never tire of it. Even more beautiful than snow.

It has been pretty unbelievable autumn, plants have just kept on producing. Tomatoes didn't want to stop at all, so in the end we just had to cut them down and clear the beds to clean and prepare the greenhouse for winter. I picked the last strawberry just a week ago, in the beginning of November. Outside from the field where it was slowly-slowly ripening. Oh how delicious it was!

I'm rather picky when it comes to apples. Basically, there's only one variety I love to sink my teeth into, just like that, plain, right off the tree. The golden liivi kuldrenett. With the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, it's crisp, fresh and juicy with a thin unnoticeable skin - it ticks all the right boxes. When it reaches that absolute state of ripeness, it becomes partly translucent, like glass candy.

It's been lurking in the back of my mind for a while to bake apples encased in pastry.
For baking, use any firm apple with a slight tang.

Apple bombes aka pastry apples

4 firm apples, with a diameter of about 10cm
4 tsp sweetened blackcurrant puree
40g marzipan
1 egg, divided
20g sugar, plus extra
10g flour
80ml milk
vanilla extract or powder

Pastry
240g flour
175g butter, in small cubes
1/4 tsp salt
80ml cold water

Start with the pastry. Sieve flour into a bowl of a food processor, add butter and salt. Whiz until coarse crumbs form. You can use a bowl and a fork instead if you don't have the machinery. Now start adding the water until the dough comes together, no more. Knead into a ball, divide in two and wrap in cling film and place in the refrigerator to chill.

Next prepare the pastry cream. Take the egg yolk (reserve the white for brushing) and whisk with 20g sugar and vanilla. Sieve in the flour. Mix well. Heat that dash of milk in a microwave until hot and pour over the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Tip it into a small saucepan and cook the mixture over a medium-low heat until thickened. It should bubble for a few minutes. Cover and let cool.

Wash and peel the apples. Remove the cores from the tail side without cutting all the way through, sort of like carving holes in the apples. Make sure to remove all the nasty bits. Fill the cavities with marzipan, pastry cream and blackcurrant puree.

Mix the egg white with a bit of extra sugar.

Start rolling out the pastry, one half at a time, into a long rectangle, about 3mm thin. The rectangle should be about 40cm long and 30cm wide. Cut it in half lengthways, creating two slender strips of dough. Wrap a strip of dough around each apple, trimming the excess and brushing all the edges and overlapping parts with egg white. Now pick up all the excess bits of dough, rolling again if necessary, and cut out leaves and stalks for the apples. Brush with egg white before applying. Lastly, brush the bombes with egg white for even colouring and place on a baking tray.

Bake at 210ºC for 20 minutes, then lower the heat to 170ºC and bake until the apples have softened and the bombes look crisp and golden.