I made them for the first time at the weekend and I was running so late they just kind of got thrown together,
but, wow! were they good.
If you make one pudding this autumn, make it these apple dumplings.
I found the recipe at all recipes and then spent about an hour trying to convert it to UK measurements and reduce it to 4 apples.
Here's my approx. recipe. I don't think it needs to be exact.
Shortcrust pastry
4 granny smith apples
Juice of 1 lemon
80g butter (cut into 6 pieces. 4 for the apples and 2 for the sauce)
120g brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Roll out the pastry into 4 approx. 6" x 6" squares. Depending on the size of your apples!
Mix the brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a shallow dish.
Peel and core the apples. Roll each apple in the lemon juice, then in the sugar and spice mix.
Place an apple on each pastry square and put a piece of butter inside.
If there's any remaining sugar mix pour it over the apples.
With slightly wet fingertips bring a corner of pastry to the top of the apple, then bring the opposite corner up and press together. Bring up the remaining corners and press together to completely seal in the apple.
This is where I was rushing, so my apples look a little rough. If you take your time you can make them nice and neat and even decorate them with pastry leaves.
Put the completed dumplings in an ovenproof dish.
For the sauce I stuck to the original recipe, but had loads left over, so I think it could easily be halved.
Approx half measures = 465ml water, 300g white sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract. (Plus the remaining pieces of butter.)
Place everything in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
Boil for 5 minutes, until the sugar has dissolved.
Pour over the dumplings.
Don't expect the sauce to look like caramel. At this stage mine was very thin and pale - but it does thicken and caramalise in the oven.
Bake for 50 - 60 minutes.
This recipe definitely makes it into the hall of fame.
They were really delicious and big hit with my hubby :-)
