food

Little apple pies

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I like a bit of a bake now and again. Always a good choice when some apples have gone past their crunchy prime or just because you fancy them. Little apple pies.

I don’t have a formal recipe – you’ll notice my scrap of paper for the pastry measure. I don’t retain recipe info naturally so have notes, receipt book for random things and a folder of printed recipes when I’m organised.

Its basic, only requiring butter, flour, water and apples. I added cinnamon to the apples and a bit in the pastry, and a spoon of demerara sugar to the apples. But its not essential really. Just for a bit more sweetness and flavour. Obviously you can add what you like, and sweeten as needed. The smaller quantity of ingredients makes around 9 pies, using 4 apples.

The recipe doesn’t require egg, but I do a milk or egg wash before they go in the oven so you get a nice sheen on them.

Then put on a cooling rack to give them a rest, before tucking in 😋

(c) K Wicks

Flapjacks recipe

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For some unknown reason over the years I completely forgot I liked flapjacks and had two jobs in bakeries, one of them being a trainee confectionist. The next batch I make might just have to half dipped in chocolate, so watch this space. From nowhere though recently, I decided to make them. I like to be organised when baking sweets things and always weigh everything out out first, I didn’t have a recipe for this so looked through the internet until I found one and scaled down the measurements for a small batch.

125g Butter

125g Demerara sugar

35g Golden syrup

170g Oats

Oven at 180 degrees – bake for 20-25 minutes and cool for 20 minutes. (with fan assisted I suggest either higher temperature or bake for longer, I should have done it for about 35-40 minutes I suspect). This is super simple and quick and a great homemade snack/treat.

Ingredients

Melt the butter and add the sugar and golden syrup. When the sugar has melted stir through the oats. Then press into your prepared tin and smooth out (you can use the back of a spoon to press it flat).

Stage 1

Once it’s baked (turned pale or golden brown), take out and cut into squares and eat 🙂

Stage 2 – done!

(c) K Wicks

Nobody likes a mouldy turnover…

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This incident happened months ago now and I very briefly mentioned it in my piece the day after it happened in ‘Death of the High Street‘. I have had a number of disappointing experiences in the local shops, but this is the one that sealed the deal for me. I guess I had decided to overlook the lack of professionalism, customer service and standards, as this is now the norm. But I draw the line at being served mouldy food. That’s where they made it feel personal and made me think ‘why should I give you my money?’.

So, the context for this is as follows. I went to the local bakery to purchase a cherry turnover, I have had them a few times before and other than a lack of adequate filling, I had no complaints. However, on this occasion, the shop assistant went to the tray slightly to my right and out of eye line and selected my turnover, personally put it in a paper bag and took my money. It was not until about two hours later that I went to eat my pastry treat, I took it out of the bag and put it on the plate, instantly seeing there was an issue. I mean, who would be happy with seeing that green powdery tinge on your apparently freshly baked produce…

Norths Bakery - Moldy Turnover #1 (10.09.19)

So, I took some pictures and found the contact details online and immediately contacted the owner of the bakery. I’ve worked in two bakeries in my time and have to say have never seen mould that far gone on ‘fresh’ food. To me there are many points of failure to have reached that stage. How did it get so moudly so quickly? From the storage area onto the shelf without being noticed? How did it make it from the shelf into the bag of a customer without being noticed? Either way I wasn’t prepared to eat there again. I did get a seemingly sincere apologetic email back from the owner, telling me that apparently they were baked the day before with a 4 day best before, but held their hands up and said this does not seem to be the case. Although offered a voucher for £10 at the bakery, I didn’t take it or reply. I was just glad they acknowledged the very serious issue and how someone along the line isn’t doing their job properly. Whether they actually care or notice they have lost a local customer for life I don’t know. There is so much passing trade these days, people can afford to lose a few it seems.

On the positive side, it as made me brave enough to attempt to cook my own as I no longer trust the standards of people trying to make money from me. And I really like turnovers. I have made apple and apple and raspberry so far, and have to say they taste better than any shop bought ones! (although still using shop bought pasty as puff pastry is still a bit beyond my capabilities and time available for baking).

Lush turnover 2

(c) K Wicks