Cookfolio

The abundance of apples lead me to make ‘Appelflappen‘ today. Yesterday while the apple cake was baking I made apple sauce, the  most easiest recipe ever. Just peal, decor and chop the apple’s into small pieces. Heat a pan with a tiny amount of water in the bottom, add the apples, some sugar (if you like) and cook the apples until they start to break up. So they are soft and slightly mushy. I also added a sprinkle of cinnamon for extra flavour.

Yesterday my daughter Amira could of eaten all of the sauce on the spot but I convinced her that it would be better to wait a day and make ‘Appelflappen’. I don’t remember how many apples I used but it was enough to fill a breakfast bowl.

Ingredients
Ready made puff pastry (packet of 10 squares)
Applesauce
1 beaten egg
sugar

Method
Heat the oven to about 220ºC. Meanwhile lay out the puff pastry to defrost. When the pastry is ready divide up the apple sauce over the squares. You can make all sorts of pastry shapes, it’s up to you. We have a small oven so I usually just make a simple rectangle shape, make sure you close the sides using a fork. Put your flappen on the baking sheet (I use baking paper), brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for about 20 mins or until golden brown. Let the flappen cool before serving otherwise they will be boiling hot!

If you have ever been to a Dutch birthday party then chances are high that you have been treated to a slice of Dutch Apple Cake. Even thought the Dutch have a really sweet tooth there really is not that much of a selection at the bakery. They also tend to prefer what they like and not venture into unknown territory.

But then again Dutch Apple Cake is one of the best! Most people take the easy route and head to the bakery or Hema for a good Apple Cake. Others, me too at times, head to the supermarket for a cake mixture. This weekend it was time for some real baking and so I pulled out some books to search for the recipe. My usual move would be a search on Google.com but I was hoping that at least one of my cooking books would provide me with a good recipe.

I was in luck. A couple of flicks through the Margriet Margriet Kook Boek and I had found two recipes that were straight forward and didn’t require an extra trip to the supermarket. I did adapt it by adding a jam glaze, more sugar to the pastry (by mistake) and a tablespoon of cornflour to the apples but I heard no complaints and only praise once the cake was ready to devour. I also loved the cake but as I only had the bigger cake tin it was flat and petit, not at all like the hearty thick big original cake. So that means maybe I will make it again when I get my cake tin back!

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the whole reason I made this recipe is because we have about 2 bags of apples from our back yard! Yippe… third year around and the taste is fabulous.

Ingredients
200 gr flour
75 gr castersugar
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
100 gr cold butter or margarine
extra knob of butter
500 gr peeled and sliced(or diced) apples
ground cinnamon

Method
Heat oven to 170ºC. Sift flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the egg yolk and small blocks of butter and crumble the mixture with your hands blending all the ingredients together. Grease the tin with butter and cover the tin with a  thick layer of the pastry dough. Mix apples and cinnamon (I added sugar, we had sour apples) in a bowl, I also added a tablespoon of cornflour. Spread the apple mix over the pastry dough and bake the cake in the middle of the oven for 45-60 mins. Let the cake cool down in the tin before removing it. I glazed the cake while it was still warm with raspberry jam. ‘Eet smakelijk“!

It was the perfect day to try the recipe on the back of the milk chocolate and peanut butter morsels package. I basically just cut the amounts listed in half and put Amira (my 10yr daughter) to work. She thought that it would be a breeze but yet did she know that one really needs muscles to make cookies.

They came out perfect and were delicious. Amira might be attempting another batch next weekend!

We had some extra over ripe banana’s, really dark, not so nice to eat as fresh but perfect for baking. So instead of making the usual banana bread I grabbed out a selection of my cook books and sifted through them until something took my fancy.

Nigella Lawson’s ‘Banana Butterscotch Muffins’ were just the perfect recipe to try. While searching the pantry for required ingredients I remembered that I still had some milk chocolate and peanut butter morsels from months ago. So I basically substitute the morsels for butterscotch chips as the recipe stated and it was a real match in heaven!!

Ingredients
½ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 2/3 cups flour
½ up sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 ¼ cups mashed bananas (2-3 ripe bananas)
½ cup peanut butter swirled morsels (the recipe stated 1 cup but thought that is way too much)

Method
Preheat oven to 200°C, put the paper liners in the cupcake baking trays. In a big bowl add the oil and beat in the eggs. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda and mix everything together. Add the banana mash an mix well. Fold the peanut butter morsels into the mixture. Fill the paper cups half way and bake for about 15mins, or until golden brown.

** Shopping tip for the Netherlands, the peanut butter morsels were bought at www.kellys-expat-shopping.nl