More than one way to skin an apple: Baked granny smiths

Nothing like a TV show where someone bakes a sponge cake containing extracts of five – count em’, five – of their own bodily fluids to put your own eating habits in perspective. Especially if you watch it while drinking the contents of a ramekin filled with butter and sugar.

But this post is not about my preference for SBS programming (even though I can reliably be located on the couch every Monday night trying to decide if I like Ted Danson, Jason Schwartzman or Louis C.K. more), it is about the best dessert to make you feel better when you arrive home late, lazy and downtrodden on a wintery night.

And this is where baked apples come galloping into the picture like the white knight of deceptively unhealthy food that they are. I guarantee this dessert will make you feel great (unless you are on a diet) and can be made in under 5 minutes. It is also one of those amazing dishes that utlilises everyday ingredients from the pantry. So instead of being suited to those who plan meals and have routine grocery shopping habits, baked apples cater to the more spur-of-the-moment, ‘must eat something sugary right now’ amongst us. As long as you pick up a granny smith apple or two when you do go food shopping, you will be prepared to make this dish at any time. And if you don’t feel like baked apples that week you could instead cover it with peanut butter and raisins, bake it into a pie or eat it on its own (I guess, as a last resort).

Baked apples (whole)
Granny smith apples (as many as you like, although the measurements below are enough for 2 apples so adjust this to match)
Chunk of butter, cut into smaller chunks, about 25g total
A pinch each of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice
1/4 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius
Peel and core the apple/s
Mix together the sugar and spices
Stuff the apples with the butter and sugar (start and end with the butter to plug the ends)
Arrange on baking tray (the dish type, not the flat type, unless you love cleaning) and bake for half an hour or until when poked with a knife the apples give a bit but aren’t soft

Baked apples (ramekin style)
Ideally baked apples would be baked whole but in this non-perfect world in which I haven’t yet tracked down an apple corer, this has lately been my method of choice

Granny smith apples (as many as you like, although the measurements below are enough for 2 apples so adjust this to match)
Chunk of butter, cut into smaller chunks, about 25g total
A pinch each of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice
1/4 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius
Peel and cut out the core of the apple/s, cut each apple into 8ths
Mix together the sugar and spices
Toss the apple pieces in the sugar and spices until coated and layer into the ramekin with the butter
Bake for half an hour or until when poked with a knife the apples give a bit – you want them to be not too hard and not too soft

This recipe helped a flat of 5 students endure a winter in an uninsulated, heat-pump-less Christchurch house. A house in which I would study in my often below-zero room in gloves and a jacket. It’s no Blumenthal-esque gastronomic delight, towering croquembouche tower or flambe bananas, but any dessert that can pull off a feat like that and remain humble is one I consider worthy of admiration.

Spot the baked apple (hint: looks like a bowl of chips)

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I ate Spongebob Squarepants’ house. And it was delicious: pineapple desserts

I haven’t posted much recently, I know. This is mainly because the devil has decided to set up camp in my head and run riot. Don’t panic though, I don’t need an exorcist, just a good painkiller. The first doctor said migraines, the second said tension headaches, the third said cluster headaches. None gave me any effective advice for controlling said migraines/headaches. Don’t get me wrong, lots of advice was given – eat more salt, eat more sugar, just eat more in general (I liked that one), change your posture every 2 minutes, give your self a back massage (she said this like she was serious but it seems like she was secretly having a laugh), and, most bizarrely, go swimming. However, none of it has worked.

But tonight I have braved the brightness of the laptop’s glare to bring you this short post on two things: making the most of what you’ve got in the fridge and the evils of food waste.

The two topics go hand in hand really. Seeing food being thrown away or thinking about how much food gets thrown away is one of the few ways that food ever makes me feel physically ill. That and the time I ate a chicken pie that had been left on the bench overnight. This guilt leads to a heavy conscience every time I buy something that I will only use a small amount of and will go off quickly, like coriander. This week’s guilty pleasures were mint and pineapple. Both were originally bought for an epic taco-and-beer night earlier in the week (which I will post about later) and have been staring at me every time I open the fridge since. So last night after making gnocchi with red onion, asparagus, chorizo and homemade tomato pasta sauce (another case of using anything I can find in the fridge that is looking a little shaky on its last legs), a fierce determination grew to cut the brown patches off the mint and pineapple and make the most of them. This led to last night’s dessert: pineapple two ways.

Pineapple with mint sugar
*start with a pineapple (or half if making both desserts)
*cut the skin off the pineapple, core it and cut the remainder into triangles, as roughly as you want (within reason – try to cut only the pineapple and not your fingers)
*take a handful of caster sugar and a handful of mint and mix up in a mortar and pestle until you have a deep green sugar
*sprinkle over the pineapple chunks and enjoy

Note: don’t get excited like I did and just when you have it perfect shout “More mint!”. If you add too much mint or grind it up too much it will take on a soggy, paste like consistency. Not that this really matters, it just makes it harder to sprinkle.

Caramelised pineapple
*start with a pineapple (or, again, half if making both desserts)
*cut the skin off the pineapple, core it and cut the remainder into thin triangles (but don’t be too pedantic, it’ll work even with big chunks)
*mix together a tablespoon of brown sugar and half a teaspoon of cinnamon and coat the pineapple
*heat a pan over medium-high heat, add the pineapple and cook for a minute or until the sugar is caramelised
*let cool, eat and, hopefully, enjoy

Both desserts were ready minutes after the ingredients left the fridge, tasted delicious, created minimal dishes and were (sort of) healthy. I call that a cooking win. Give them a go!

Note: there are no photos this time as I am sick of abusing your trust in me by including terrible quality, blurry shots