The Great Flapjack challenge (part one)

So I asked for flapjack recipes.

I got, wait for it, two.

Which is probably a good thing, as serial flapjack making will inevitably lead to serial flapjack eating which will lead, equally inevitably, to muffin (flapjack?) tops and wobbly bottoms (she says, as though she doesn't have both already).

Hey ho.

Anyway, the Moiderer's recipe. You can find it here but it didn't seem to be doing anything unexpected: butter, golden syrup, oats, Demerara sugar (hmmm, I usually use dark brown, maybe that's it).

I got my sous-chefs involved too - if they're going to eat, they can jolly well cook too.






And after some light melting and stirring, they (the flapjacks, not the children) were in the oven:






timer set for precisely 20 minutes as instructed.

Out they came, were cooled for five minutes and cut into squares:





before being subjected to the acid test: Edinburgh on Calcutta cup day and a very cold and disappointed man called Hamish.

His verdict? "Perfect".

Quest over? Well, maybe, but maybe not. Because while Hamish approved, I thought they still lacked a bit of squidge, and were possibly (sorry, Moiderer) a wee bit greasy (they're half butter, grease is perhaps inevitable).

So I'm not giving up yet. Amy's recipe to come. With condensed milk, which is different. And if I still think I can do better, be warned, I will start mugging mothers-in-law.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

What do you do if you have one of these?:

Not to mention three of these:

(yes, I realise they do look a bit nasty but they're the ones that came off the tree yesterday, so they got bashed around a bit by the wind).

Well, first you chop up six kilos of them and put them in your freezer.  Then you realise that you now don't have any room for anything else in your freezer, so you take some of them out and make apple puree, apple chutney, apple sauce (yes, I know it's the same as apple puree but my children don't, and it turns out they'll eat pork if you cover it in sweetened apples, which is a bonus), apple crumble, apple pie, baked apples, apples, apples, apples, apples, apples...

Does anybody want some apples?

You'll have got the gist.  We've got a lot of apples and we're rapidly running out of ideas as to what to do with them. And then I realised that the prize in English Mum's Big Autumn Bake Off is a copy of a book called Food from Plenty: Good Food Made from the Plentiful, the Seasonal and the Leftover with Over 300 Recipes, None of Them Extravagant by Diana Henry.  And if there's ever a book I need, it's that one.

So, for the first time in my life... I made up a recipe.

I give you:

Apple Fairy Cakes (I need a snazzier name, I know, any suggestions?)

And you know what, they were delicious. So delicious in fact, and I'm so proud of myself (and L, who did some very valuable stirring) that not only am I blogging about them, in a blow your own trumpet sort of a way, but I also made them again, only in a big tin this time, and served it with creme fraiche as a pudding.

So, for my own reminder, when I can't remember this time next year, how I did it, and for anyone else in the same boat, here's the secret:

You need:

3 medium sized bramley apples
lemon juice (jif is fine)
teaspoon of cinnamon
demerara sugar
2 large eggs
butter
caster sugar
plain flour
teaspoon of baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180 centigrade. (I have no idea what that is in farenheit, sorry)

Peel, core and chop up your apples into smallish chunks (you're going to put them in the middle of a fairy cake after all), and put them in a bowl with a squeeze of lemon juice, a tablespoon or so of demerara and a teaspoon of cinnamon.

Weigh your eggs, shell on.

I know, you think I'm weird don't you? But honestly, this is how Mrs Beeton used to make a sponge cake, and if it worked for her... It's also the only way I know how to other than following a recipe, because it's how my mum told me, and presumably hers before that, and hers before that. I find something very comforting in the idea of all these women baking in the same way.

Weigh out the same amount of butter, caster sugar and flour.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one by one.  Then fold in the flour and baking powder. You can probably use self-raising instead if you like, I just didn't happen to have any.

Lay out fifteen (or so, that's how many it made for me) fairy cake cases (I've got the ordinary sized ones you can get in the supermarket - about two and a bit inches across (she says, vaguely, having absolutely no sense of spatial awareness)) and put a heaped teaspoon of mixture in each one.  Put two or three bits of apple on top of that, and then another, smaller, teaspoon of mixture on top. It'll be a bit sticky, and it probably won't spread down, but don't worry, it will in the oven.

Sprinkle some more demerara sugar on top and put them in the oven for about 12-15 minutes until they are golden brown.

If you do it in a big tin, mine is about 20 cm in diameter and it took more like 50 minutes to cook.  It was quite thin too, so next time I might do it with three eggs and increase all the other quantities as above.  It was also one of those cakes that was better the next day.

Oh, and if anyone has any other ideas as to what I can do with a million Bramley apples, do say.

ps Tescos had blackberries on special offer this week.... crumble for lunch on Sunday I think.

The sort of thing a proper SAHM does with her children.

I have had an utterly, utterly, rubbish day today.  I have been the sort of mother I hate.  The sort of mother who shouts at her children so loudly they cry, and who gives herself a sore throat in the process.  The sort of mother who gets constantly whinged at from waking to sleeping, and who can't decide whether to scream, cry, throw the sodding plate of pasta and sausages ("I don't like sausages") through the window, or just walk out, whilst simultaneously doing all of the above.

It's been awful.

It's Varicella Zoster's fault.  L has the pox.  So we've been stuck in the house (and the garden: thank heavens, lucky stars and all the deities in the pantheon that this didn't happen when we didn't have a garden to speak of) since yesterday morning, and we're all getting very scratchy and cross with each other.  L isn't ill, or at least not so ill so that you can park her in front of the telly, but she's itchy and whiny and we're rubbing each other up the wrong way...  And A and S haven't got it yet, but it's surely only a matter of time.

Which is why I'm going to blow my own trumpet. And remind myself what a great mother I can be when I want to.  And that I can do the stuff that the books tell you you're supposed to do. And that it was fun.

And that hopefully, those are the days they'll remember when they are grown up. Not the ones like today.

It started on Saturday. Bright, but cold.  We piled into the car, packed our passports and headed for the Border.  To Ford and Etal to be precise.  Apparently they're two little villages with all sorts of interesting things in.  But we never actually got there, because L was sick on the way, and we arrived too late for the miniature railway and it was all a bit rubbish until we got to Heatherslaw Mill which is actually in between the two.  It's fantastic! It's a proper working water mill, and L, at just 3, was fascinated.  By the water rushing in, and the cogs turning, and the big stones grinding against each other, and the flour going into the bag ("like in Bagpuss"*)  and the chocolate cake we had in the sunshine afterwards:

So we bought some flour and we took it home, and no one was sick and we agreed we'd had a lovely day.

And on Monday I put on my Ocado apron (I miss Ocado) and my goodSAHM hat, and once A and S were in bed, L and I got busy:

We got our ingredients and our recipe (Nigella's best, because I intend to be a Domestic Goddess.  One day) ready:

We mixed our Heatherslaw-milled flour (500g) with our salt (1 tsp), our bicarbonate of soda (2 tsps) and our cream of tartar (4.5 tsps).  Then we "stroked" the butter (50g - which is not what Nigella says, but I think it's a misprint, and anyway, I don't believe in following recipes exactly, where's the fun in that?) into the dry ingredients with our fingers:

until we had mixed it all in.

We poured in the milk (300ml) and got our fingers all sticky mixing that in, before turning it out onto the side and "pushing and pulling" it all together.  L subscribes to the school of thought that says all food stuffs are improved by the addition of sultanas (I know men who feel the same way about bacon), so we stuck 75g of those in too (the out of focus-ness indicates the vigorousness of the kneading):

Then we rolled it out:

Before cutting them out with a 6.5 cm crinkle-edged round cutter (B agreed with Nigella that the crinkles were very important) and "painting" them with egg:

Then we put them in the oven which we had uncharacteristically remembered to preheated to 220 (gas 7) and waited excitedly for ten minutes:

before taking them out ("careful Mummy, they're hot") with care and pride:

By this stage, S and A had woken up, so we took (hideouslyuglyjumblesale) Teddy outside and had a picnic (complete with checked "rug"):

The fact that they then ate so many scones they refused to eat any supper that wasn't scones is one we'll gloss over in favour of the best bit: not only did L and I enjoy ourselves, and the girls adore the scones, I got to send them to nursery with them on Tuesday as a "snack", and look like a really proper SAHM there too.

And I live in hope that tomorrow (S and A at nursery (without scones: we've eaten them all),  Spotty and I here, with a carrot loaf recipe, or possibly "more scones please Mummy") is more like that, and less like today.  Wish me luck. And send me any ideas for entertaining the pox-infested.  Please.


* ps and for your viewing pleasure. Here's the best part of that epic episode:  You can't (as any fule kno) make chocolate biscuits out of breadcrumbs and butterbeans