Apples and autumn

Well autumn has finally arrived and the cold has come with it! I have written more than once about how much I love this time of year - autumn into winter! It starts with a little chill that gets colder and colder until large coats and thick scarves are fully acceptable and expected and that, my friend, is  licence to walk around in a duvet all day!!

However we are not quite at that point yet, so for the moment I can just enjoy the chill in the air, an occasional scarf, which is my happy place, well one of them...my happiest place would be in my fiancé's arms standing beside a Christmas tree. Okay sorry, I am wandering off in a dream! From the time the leaves start to change I develop an obsession with apples so I decided it would be appropriate to dedicate a whole post to my seasonal favourite.

Property of Lipton

The inspiration for this has actually been a loss. Every single autumn/winter winter, since about 2008, until this one I have been drinking the delicious and incredible Lipton warming Apple and Cinnamon Tea. This won't be news as I have blogged about it before here but the loss of this consistent and warming tea has left me feeling at an enormous loss. I have tried every other apple tea available in the UK market right now and the only thing that comes close is Teapigs 'Apple and Cinnamon,' tea. However it's not as good, in my opinion, and at £4.15 for 15 teabags, well I hope sincerely that they bring out a 50 teabag box soon. However I have started a search to try to recreate this incredible tea myself and I will blog about it if I am anyway successful!

So you cannot think apple and autumn without thinking apple pie! This apple pie consists of a nutty pastry crust and a delicious apple and amaretto filling.

And finally I decided to make my delicious apple salted caramel cake into muffins and they turned out great! Granted they don't have much of the classic muffin format or puffy top but they are so soft and delicious on the inside that you will definitely forgive me. The recipe is here but there are a few alterations. The original recipe calls for cake flour or make your own cake flour. But for these I wanted them to have slightly more structure so I replaced 1 tablespoon of the flour with corn flour but nothing more because too light is not great for muffins. Half of the mixture from my last post will make 12 muffins and I recommend that you fill them up to the brim for the full looking muffins you see below....

 Inside they are fluffy and delicious with moisture and flavour from the apples and soft and delicious bits of cake between each piece of apple

They are not a health food but they are definitely full of autumn flavour and definitely good for the soul!!

Blueberry Pie, cos Suits, obviously

Myself and my bf have recently gotten back into watching Suits. We watched it for a long time and I liked it but we reached a certain stage where you are a couple seasons in and we can't have a single episode without everyone talking about 'Mike's secret.' Ok, we get it, he doesn't have a law degree, stop talking about it and get a f**king law degree already! There's also an issue with Suits that exists in several major dramas (Grey's Anatomy, to name a huge culprit) where the characters supposedly work intensive, high stress jobs but spend the majority of their time on screen making emotionally driven, ill-conceived decisions and talking about their relationships. I enjoy it, don't get me wrong, but I probably wouldn't have them represent me in court.

So rant aside, We were watching the intro and we really enjoy the part of the intro music that says 'See the money, wanna stay for your meal. Get another piece of pie for your wife.' I reflected to my boyfriend how much this song really made me crave pie (something they NEVER eat in the show, just saying!). Hence we made pie.....

Blueberry pie is a classic summer dish and in this part of the world it is now, officially, summer. So we decided to go for a classic design and spice it up slightly with a puff pastry, which tastes amazing and has a rustic (read less than perfect) appearance.

Just look at those berries

The center has a B for blueberries, my boyfriend's idea; his name may or may not start with a B also, so that might have had something to do with it too! The puff may not make the perfect pinterest style pie image but it sure makes for a wonderful mixture of textures. The base pastry, as you can imaging absorbs a lot of the blueberry juice, so while it is certainly not soggy (respect Mary-berry), it is denser with juice and the fluffy puff pastry lattice really contrasts it nicely.

I made the short-crust pastry but used a store bought puff pastry, because who has the time for that?!
So make sure that your short crust pastry is chilled well before rolling out. Then push down into the pie-tin. Chill again after rolling and shaping. Then fill with pastry beads or rice and par cook.

Now the filling -

1200g frozen blue-berries
150g Caster sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
45g cornflour
1 teaspoon butter

Mix well together and fill the pie case when it's partially cooked

I added the butter to the top but you could mix it in, either.

To make the lattice top, We followed these instructions - they are straight forward and very helpful.
and then bake at 180' for 30 minutes.

Leave to chill for a few hours if you can resist or otherwise eat with ice-cream. Enjoy =)