Apple Dappy - it must be nearly winter!

APPLE DAPPY (Serves 6)

8 oz (225g) S-R flour
2 oz (50 g) margarine
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 pint (150 ml) milk
Pinch salt
1 tblspn Demerara sugar
1/2 level tsp. cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves or mixed spice
2 good-size apples (I use cookers, but dessert will do)

Syrup:

1 (washed) lemon or a little lemon essence
1 tblspn golden syrup
1/2 oz (15g) margarine
4 oz (100g) sugar
7 fl. oz (200 ml) water

Make syrup first.  Peel fine strips of lemon rind and squeeze lemon.  Put rind, juice and all other syrup ingredients into a pan and stir over a gentle heat until sugar is dissolved.  Leave to cool.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and rub in marg.  Mix to dough with milk.  Roll into 8" x 5" x 1/4" thick rectangle on floured board.  (20 x 13cm x 7 mm thick).

Peel, core and chop apples and spread on pastry.  Mix sugar and spice together and sprinkle over apple.  Roll up pastry and apple like a swiss roll.  Then cut into slices about 1" (2.5 cm) thick.

Grease an ovenproof dish  and lay slices flat on it.  Remove lemon rind from syrup and pour over the apple slices.  Bake in a moderately hot oven, Gas 6, 375 deg. F, 190 deg. C for about 30 mins.

Serve with cream or custard.

This is an old Devon recipe .
                          
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I just fancied making Apple Dappy this afternoon, late on, and the top photo is how it turned out.  Unfortunately I am SO stuffed with the other half of the Hay-on-Wye butcher's fabulous Steak and Kidney Pie I couldn't eat another mouthful.  The enamel dish it is in is one of two I bought for 50p each at a car boot sale.  They are just the right size for Apple Dappy and various puddings which I occasionally cook.

Above and below: another frosty and misty start to the day, but it cleared to sunshine.  I was planning a walk, but got started on housework, clearing away jobs, emptying jam jars of old jams and chutneys, washing them and getting off the labels, peeling apples to stew up, making the Apple Dappy, and picking up another feed sack of windfalls.   This morning  30 minutes was spent getting the paper 3 miles away because up at Ty Coch they were unloading a double trailer of huge straw bales.  The son was very adept with the weeny fork-lift, but his dad came to tell me they would be 10 minutes, so I turned the engine off and the radio on.  Bless them, when they had emptied one trailer the lorry driver backed up the lorry so I could scoot to the edge of the yard and then get past him.  I came back the long way. . .

I actually managed to READ most of the newspaper today, instead of just hurriedly glancing through it because I had Better Things To Do.  I even saw some daytime tv, but I was peeling apples at the time so didn't feel too guilty.

Now I will spend the evening sewing something, as I am in the mood.  I shall be glad when OH has had his cataract operation in the morning, having foolishly read the notes on what might go wrong . . .