Hugh’s, from the latest Waitrose magazine, that is normally full of poncey crap, but this time I found a few useful things in there.

4 nice apples, cored and chopped and peeled, slowly cooked in a melted butter and sugar mixture, with some cinnamon, left to cool a bit.

For the pie itself I creamed 150 g of butter with 125 g of sugar, 2 whole eggs, and then 75 g and same amount of ground almonds. This mixture I put into a tin layered with baking parchment and the apples went on top, with all their juices. It stayed in the oven for nearly an hour, in 170 degrees. Finished off with icing sugar, like Sniezka on Jana’s photos.

Inspired by a current series of Masterchef. I was just sitting and watching some telly boy making a rhubarb fool with biscuits, while my boeuf bourguignon was nearly done in the oven, my potatoes were nearly soft,   I was thinking – I need a dessert, it’s been a lovely, warm, sunny day off, we’ve had lunch at the river in Kingston, I need a nice finishing touch.

So I made some  nice, quick caramel, threw some chopped pears in, left them in for about 7 minutes and cooled them. I whipped the cream with icing sugar and vanilla paste, as usual, with a touch of lemon juice.  And layered  it all nicely, topped with toasted flaked almonds and some grated chocolate. Nice, very sweet, but nice.

I did make more Chinese tonight, nice beef stir fry, on the photo it looks too similar to the one I made last night, so will give it a miss, when it comes to blogging. I also baked a pear cake for dessert, simple recipe from Good Food, but the damn thing didn’t bake properly. It went to the bin, I got pissed off, thought for a minute and went back to the kitchen with a selection of vocabulary that helped me express the fact, that I wanted a dessert!! There were frozen berries, there was Ambrosia and all the other necessary ingredients, so a Berry Slump was made,  like in the original recipe, not with nectarines, with berries. Softened quickly in the pan with a splash of water and baked off under the mix of butter, self raising flour, sugar( all in the amount of 50 g), 2 eggs and vanilla paste, just as in the recipe months ago, lots of flaked almonds on top, 40 minutes in the medium hot oven. I ended up with a yummy sponge on a sour berries, with a lovely crunchy almonds on top. Simple, but lovely.

I spotted that recipe in one of last year’s editions of Good Food. I baked it this afternoon, it’s moist, springy, sweet and sticky and I love it.

First I prepared the tin, lined with the baking paper, in went about 4 spoons of maple syrup, then 3 ripe bananas, cut in half and placed down in the syrup, while the oven was heating up to 160 degrees ( gas 3).

For the cake itself I used 100 g of softened butter, one ripe banana, 200 g of light muscovado sugar, 4 eggs, some vanilla paste, 200 g of self raising flour, 100 g of ground almonds, 1 tsp of soda and a 200g pot of Greek yoghurt.

Butter, eggs, sugar, paste and banana got beaten up together, then in went flour, almonds and soda, yoghurt in the end. All this went onto the prepared bananas and baked for around an hour. When ready, I pricked the cake and poured some more maple syrup onto the little holes, then turned it upside down.

Very, very happy with the result.