Category Archives: Apple

Apple Purée

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Today I thought I’d share something we eat nearly every day but that usually flies under the radar: apple purée.

As per usual with me, this is really not revolutionary – it’s just cooked apples that have been whizzed up. But it is SO yummy, simple, useful, versatile, healthy and cheap. How else can I sell it?

I first made this when we had loads of apples and they were just starting to go a bit soft and not so nice for eating plain. Now I buy extra apples (little ones, or ones with a couple of marks on them) just for making into purée. I make it once every couple of weeks, and the obsessive housewife in me packs 1-cup quantities into little snap lock bags (which can be used over and over and over), and freezes them. Then I take them out the night before I need them, and they’re purée again by morning.

I add the purée to my muesli, fresh fruit and yoghurt for breakfast – great way to bulk out the meal without adding extra fat or excess kJ. You can also use it in desserts,  smoothies, milkshakes etc, or I’m sure there are plenty of other ideas floating around. I think you could use it in most instances as a substitute for store-bought apple sauce – much better for you, too.

I really like using apple purée as a substitute for butter in baking recipes. I have a general rule of thumb for cakes, muffins and loaves etc, that you can swap a quantity of butter for a half and half mix of fruit purée and low-fat spread. It’s not a fail-safe rule, some recipes do need a higher quantity of fat to work, so I can’t guarantee you success! But for example, I made a beautiful gingerbread a few days ago – instead of 200g butter, I used 100g apple puree, and 100g low fat spread, and it came out perfectly (I’ll post the recipe sometime soon). You really wouldn’t know from the taste, and although the sugar content is still high, you’ve significantly lowered the fat, which is a great start! By the way, this can be a great option if you need to make a baking recipe dairy-free.

Apple Purée (or you could use pears)
Just cut apples into quarters, and remove the core and pips. Chop the apples roughly, leaving the skin on (it’s where lots of the goodness is, and it just melts into the puree during cooking and whizzing). I microwave my apples – pop say 800g of them in a microwave proof bowl with 1-2 Tbsp cold water, cover and cook on high for about 8 minutes. I don’t find you need to add any sugar, unless the apples are spectacularly tart. Alternatively, you could steam them on the stove top, just until they’re tender and will puree easily. Once they’re cooked, transfer the contents (including the liquid) to a food processor, and whiz for a couple of minutes, or until you have a smooth puree. The purée in this photo is made from lovely gala apples and they gave it this beautiful rosy pink colour.

Enjoy!

Apple Ice Creams with Brandy Caramel

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My favourite McDonalds ice cream sundae flavour was always caramel. Caramel sauce is delicious! I’ve had a recipe for it in my book for years.

I recently saw an idea for hollowing out apples and filling them with ice cream in a Martha Stewart magazine article.  They were served at a fairly typically Martha Stewart pumpkin carving party for children. Looked like a house in the Hamptons to me! I’ve never seen such colour co-ordination among children and leaves.


The apple sundaes looked so pretty and I thought this would be a delicious new use for caramel sauce. To make the sauce a bit thinner, a bit glossier and a bit more interesting, I added some brandy. Topped with chopped nuts …. amazing. And you can eat the bowl.


I think it looks like quite an impressive Sunday night pudding, but actually there’s almost nothing to it. You just make up the sauce and assemble the dessert. And the sauce can be refrigerated (and I’m 99% sure it can be frozen, tests are currently underway) so you can even do that in advance.

Apple Ice Creams with Brandy Caramel
The sauce would probably serve at least 8. If you don’t need that much, (try to) refrigerate or freeze the rest

25g butter
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
¼ cup golden syrup
¼ cup cold water
pinch salt
1x tin (400g) sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
2 Tbsp brandy
apples (use nice round red ones that ‘stand up’ nicely)
ice cream
chopped nuts

Place the butter in a saucepan and melt it gently. Add the brown sugar, golden syrup, water and salt. Heat gently at first and stir constantly as the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil, still stirring, until the mixture really bubbles like mad. Reduce the heat, and add the condensed milk, vanilla and brandy. Stir until it’s nicely combined and a good caramel colour, then take it off the heat.

Cut the top bit off the apple, and scoop out all the inside flesh. I used a melon baller which was handy, I’m sure a teaspoon would do the trick. If you want to do this more than 5 minutes before serving, squeeze lemon juice over the apple to stop it browning. Fill the apple with a scoop or two of ice cream, and drizzle with the warm caramel (if the caramel has thickened while you got the apples ready, just gently heat it again, or add one more dash of brandy). Top with chopped nuts and serve.

Vintage Cooking: Apple Shortcake

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I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I love using family recipes. It’s easy to feel a real connection with your family, even members you never got to meet, when you read their handwriting, follow their instructions, and enjoy food that they once prepared for their family and friends.

This recipe is from my grandmother’s recipe book. Grandma Joan was my mother’s mother and grew up on a farm in Waihola, near Dunedin. She had three brothers, and their father had died when the children were teenagers, so the boys took over the management of the farm, and Grandma would have helped her mother at home. This is Grandma Joan – I think this photo was probably taken in Dunedin in the mid-1940s.

Grandma married my grandfather in the 1950s, and she moved to his family farm at Taieri Beach (also near Dunedin), where they raised their family and farmed for many years. This picture is of my grandparents on their honeymoon:

My mum spotted this handwritten recipe in Grandma’s book and suggested I try it. I don’t remember Grandma making it when I was a little girl; it isn’t a family favourite or anything – but I imagine Grandma would have made it for the farm staff many times. She must have been pretty familiar with it, at any rate – the recipe in her book is just a scribbled list of ingredients and the words, “usual method”!

This isn’t a decadent meal of a slice – like most of our every day farm baking recipes, it makes a delicious but fairly plain sweet to enjoy after lunch or on a tea break. It pays to have a few recipes like this in your book; they’re simple to make, well liked by most people, and while I wouldn’t describe the shortcake as exactly “healthy”, you don’t feel like you need to put an hour in at the gym to compensate for eating a slice!

Grandma Joan’s Apple Shortcake

¼ lb (115g) butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1½ cups, plus 1 Tbsp (230g) flour
1½ tsp baking powder
two small apples, thinly sliced (unpeeled is fine)
2 tsp sugar, extra
icing sugar, to dust

Preheat the oven to 200°(c). Grease and/or line either a 26x17cm slice/brownie pan, or a round cake tin, depending on your preference.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat again. Add the sifted flour and baking powder, and mix to a soft dough. Add a little milk if the mixture seems very dry (I didn’t need any). Halve the dough (I find it easiest to weigh it; each half should weigh around 250g). Roll the first half out and press it into your greased tin.

Layer the slices of apple over the dough, and sprinkle with 1 tsp of the extra sugar. Roll out the remaining dough and lay this on top of the apple slices. Prick with a fork and sprinkle with the remaining 1 tsp of sugar.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the dough is lightly golden and smells cooked. Leave to cool in the tin before dusting with icing sugar and cutting into squares, bars,  or, if you used a round cake tin, wedges.

Bread and Butter Pudding

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I didn’t grow up with bread and butter pudding, but I’m led to believe it is a classic English pud and a favourite for many - rich and custardy bread. Mmmm.

This is a healthier version of bread and butter pudding. I’ve flavoured this one with apple and cinnamon, and it was pretty good … but I believe that there is an ultimate bread and butter pudding out there waiting to be discovered. So I’ll be trialling different flavours and recipes over the next few weeks, hopefully culminating in a superb bread and butter pudding! If you have any flavour suggestions, please leave a comment!

Apple and Cinnamon Bread & Butter Pudding

2 apples, cored and diced (I left the peel on)
6-8 slices fruit bread
apricot jam
1 orange, finely grated rind (I had no oranges so I used 3 mandarins. Don’t try it. It’s not tidy).
2 Tbsp brown sugar
3 eggs
1 egg white
1 1/2 cups trim milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice

Preheat the oven to 180 (c). Spray a ceramic baking dish with non-stick spray.

Place the chopped apples in a microwave safe bowl and cover with a plate. Cook for 3-4 minutes on high, until the fruit is tender. Drain well and set aside.

Spread the slices of fruit bread with the jam, and cut the slices into quarters. Layer half the bread in the baking dish, spread side up. Then layer the apples on top of the bread. Sprinkle over the orange rind and brown sugar.

Then layer the other slices of fruit bread on top, spread side down.

Whisk together the eggs, extra egg white and caster sugar until frothy. Add the milk, cinnamon and mixed spice, and whisk again. Pour this mixture over the pudding and leave it on the bench to soak for 10 minutes or so.

Bake the pudding for about 35 minutes, until it feels firm on top, and is nice and golden. Don’t worry if the custard still looks a little bit runny, it will set while you rest it for 5 minutes. Dust the pudding with icing sugar and serve with extra custard. Serves 4-6.