Harvest time is one of our favourite times of year, with fruit filling the air (or more likely carpeting the ground) and possibilities abound with what to do with all that fruit.

Some apples are great eaten as they are, but that only applies to a select few of the varieties you might have growing in your back garden. If it’s a cooking apple tree you’ve got, eating it raw is just a recipe (aha) for a bitter or sharp disaster. So, we’ve pulled together our favourite apple-related recipes to help you cook up a storm this season, starting with this writer’s personal favourite: apple pie.

Apple Pie

apples in a pieArtist’s interpretation

Apple pie’s great, and cooking it’s nice and straightforward if you just buy your pastry rather than making it from scratch. You can, but we’re not experts so feel free to find a pastry recipe online or just use this one from the BBC.

Prep time – 20min (if you don’t make your own pastry)
Cook time – 45min

Ingredients:

  • Apples – 1kg
  • Caster Sugar – 140g
  • Plain Flour – 3 tbsp
  • Milk – dash

Equipment

  • Knife
  • Peeler
  • Mixing bowl
  • 20cm diameter, 4cm deep pie tin
  • Oven, 190oC (170oC for fan-assisted and mark 5 for gas)

Core, peel and slice your apples a few millimetres thick (to personal preference, the thinner you cut the more jammy the pie’s innards will be, but too thick and it won’t all cook through), then pat dry to reduce the amount of  water that could mess with the pastry . Mix it all with your sugar and flour, then pour into your pastry-lined pie tin and cover with a pastry top. Cut off the excess, pinch it closed around the edges (this is where you can get fancy with the look) and clice a couple of holes in the top to let the steam out. If you want to get your pie instagram worthy, use the excess pastry to make some shapes and stick those on the top.

Brush with milk, sprinkle with a bit of extra sugar then pop it in the oven for 45 minutes or until golden. When it’s ready, leave it on the side for a bit to rest and save you scalding anybody with the sun-hot innards, then serve with your choice of ice cream, whipped cream, squirty cream or custard. Or as is, we’re not the boss of you.

Apple Crumble

crumble in a tin
No need for tin lining though, and clearly this has got berries in

Crumble’s a great recipe for using up apples along with any other soft fruits and berries you might have lying around – just substitute any number of grams from the half kilo of apples and make it up with the other fruit. It all mixes together in the cooking, so you don’t have to worry about burning one for the sake of jam-ifying the other. Just make sure it’s all under the crumble topping.

Prep time – 20min
Cook time – 40min

Ingredients:

  • Apples – 500g
  • Caster Sugar – 110g + 2 tbsp
  • Plain Flour – 170g
  • Butter (cold) – 110g
  • Salt – pinch

Equipment:

  • 23cm round or 20cm square baking dish, 5cm deep. Or any baking dish that can fit 2L in
  • Knife
  • Peeler
  • Mixing bowl
  • Food processor if you don’t want to get your hands dirty
  • Fork
  • Oven, 190oC (170oC for fan-assisted and mark 5 for gas)

Core, peel and slice your apples about a centimetre thick – as above, some personal preference is involved but here you don’t want to go too thin lest you lose all of the chunks that makes crumbles great. Jumble the apples up with the 2tbsp of sugar, then press them into your baking dish so they fill all of the gaps as well as they can.

Put all your flour and the rest of the sugar in a mixing bowl with the salt pinch, along with the butter, then pinch and thumb it all together to get it looking breadcrumby. This is where you can use a food processor if you don’t want to be all fingers and thumbs, but it’s a breadcrumb look you want so don’t overdo it. Once you have that mix, pour it over the middle of your dish of apples, and spread out with your fork.

Give the top a press all over, sprinkle on some sugar, then throw in the oven for 40 minutes until the top is golden – you may want to put it on a tray to catch the fruity drips. When the time’s up, check it’s squishy with a knife then wait 10 minutes before serving. This baked apple can get pretty hot!

Want some more harvest recipes? Check out last year’s Autumn Harvest Cookbook!

 

Header Photo by Pierpaolo Riondato on Unsplash
Pastry Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Apples Photo by Eiliv-Sonas Aceron on Unsplash
Crumble Photo by Dilyara Garifullina on Unsplash