Apple Crumble

I love watching cooking programs on TV. My latest favourite is The Great British Bake Off, although I have to make sure that I have something tasty to eat when it's on as it really makes my mouth water! I enjoyed watching The Good Cook too and still have a few of them to watch. I really liked the look of the sticky toffee pudding, which I am yet to make, and the rhubarb crumble.

As you will have seen I have been working my way through apple recipes, chutney, pie, Bramley lemon curd, and fruit leathers. I had worked my way through nearly all of the apples and was planning on making an apple crumble with the last few when I was given another bag full!

Mr VST and I had looked at the Apple Master last weekend and I was sorely tempted but could not justify buying it for the four apples I had left. The new bag of apples gave me very good reason to buy it - yipee! I do love a good gadget. I'm usually more of an electrical gadget fan and not one of those people who collects one trick gadgets but I loved using this. Firstly after a little adjustment, which I also loved doing, real levers and nuts to move and unscrew, I managed to get it working perfectly. There is something very satisfying about seeing the simple mechanisms working away as you turn the handle and best of all it saves on claw hands from too much apple peeling!

Anyway, back to the recipe. I have my usual, very simple, crumble recipe from my Mum which I have used successfully but when I saw this lovely thick crumble on TV it looked special and I had to try it. There are no magic ingredients, it is just the quantities of them that are varied and this one uses a LOT of butter.

The result was that I made a ton of crumble! I had so much that even after topping my usual crumble dish and three ramekins I still had some left.

I baked the crumble as the recipe suggested for 35 minutes and it was nicely crunchy on top as crumble should be. It was so thick that the rest of it was more like a cake than crumble! It was very light though. 

Apple Pie Crumbles

Earlier in the week I made some apple pie samosas. The recipe called for two cooking apples but I had four so I made twice as much of the filling mix. It is a combination of apples, sugar, mixed spice and raisins and is really tasty. I decided to put it underneath some crumble topping and we had it for pudding with some ice cream. Crumble really is one of my favourite puddings and this didn't disappoint. 

 

Gylly Beach Cafe, Falmouth

Mr VST and I are on holiday this week. We came down to stay with some friends in Falmouth on Wednesday evening. We went out for dinner to the Gylly Beach Cafe for dinner. There were two vegetarian main options, a spinach and mushroom lasagne served with garlic ciabatta and salad and Pan-Fried Primavera Risotto 

Cakes with helford blue cheese served with salad and rocket & walnut pesto. Neither of us are keen on blue cheese but Mr VST can't stand it. I didn't want to have the same thing as him so I chanced it!

There wasn't a strong blue cheese flavour at all and the risotto cakes were lovely. I'm not sure they needed to be pan-fried though. It just made the outer layer chewy. The insides were creamy rice with the 'primavera' consisting mostly of peas. The salad and rocket and walnut pesto were a great accompaniment.

I had a bite of Mr VST's lasagne. The mushrooms were delicious, the garlic ciabatta was very garlic-y as was the rest of both of our meals. It worked well on the bread but I'm not so keen on waking up with garlic mouth the next day which I did. I think maybe a little less garlic would have been better. The cafe was lovely though with a great atmosphere. We shared puddings with our hosts and went for a chocolate amaretto torte with poached orange segments and an apple and rhubarb crumble with elderflower custard.

As you can see the chocolate torte was beautifully presented. It was thick, creamy and chocolatey as you would expect and the poached oranges were delicious.

The crumble can also be recommended. There didn't seem to be an awful lot of ginger in the crumble itself but it is one of my favourite puddings and the elderflower custard was sweet and light.

Not strictly food but I thought these pasty toys were great! They were in a shop window in Falmouth. They seem to be dressed up to celebrate the royal wedding. We got a couple of real ones for lunch a bit later on.

Fennel, Tomato and Apple Soup

Friday night we travelled to my Mum's in Nottingham after work. She had prepared us a delicious soup that she said was really easy to make. It was very flavoursome and healthy feeling although I haven't got the recipe yet so I may be wrong on that front.

Cheese Pie, Jacket Potato and Carrots

Friday night saw us travelling down to the in-laws. Mr VST had requested a speciality of his mother's, her cheese pie. This consists of pie crust, bottom and top, with cheese sauce inside it. It is nursery food at it's best. There are sometimes Quorn chicken-style pieces in the pie but then it changes it's name to Quorn pie! On Friday I detected some onion in there. It was good pie and I ate FAR too much of it. This was served with some boiled carrots and a jacket potato and then followed by a proper crumble. It was an apple and rhubarb crumble with a thick (2cms) crumble on top which was the perfect texture mmmmmm.