Having said farewell and good luck to the departing graduates, Mirinda had to give a little speech of welcome to the new intake today. It meant a train into town at 3pm for a 15 minute speech, then a train back. While she was gone, I made apple dumplings.
I have to say that baking in my new kitchen is an absolute joy. There’s nothing like a huge expanse of worktop to roll out the pastry and enough room to have everything ready to go. It’s a huge improvement over the old, crappy and very tiny space I used to have. In those dim, dark days, baking was a chore. It is now a joy.
Apple dumplings are peeled, hollowed out apples, filled with a sweet, creamy mixture and wrapped in shortcrust pastry. They are decorated with little pastry leaves to, oddly, give the impression that they are apples wrapped in apples.
Having a dishwasher is also a wonderful addition. Having completed the dumplings and put them in the fridge for later baking, I set to stacking the dishwasher and wiping down. It was all done in about ten minutes, which was rather good because the actual pastry work took a good deal longer. However, I learned a valuable lesson – be careful what you put in the dishwasher because you might need it later.
It might only be a vegetable peeler but when you use it to peel your apples and drop it in the cutlery cage, you can’t use it to peel your potatoes later in the day. I managed to get around this little hiccough and will remember it for next time.
Speaking of hiccoughs…poor Emma had them tonight. At one stage, we were reclining on the lounges and Mirinda suddenly shouted, scaring the daylights out of Day-z and me but having no effect whatsoever on Emma or her hiccoughs. I’m not sure if sudden, loud noises work on puppies. A little later I threw her in the air and wiggled her a bit. She then gathered herself together, went to the water bowl and had a drink. The hiccoughs disappeared.
After dinner, we waited a while before tucking into two of the four apple dumplings. Modesty forbids me from saying how incredibly delicious and perfectly formed they were. Actually, ‘perfectly formed’ is probably stretching the truth a bit. One of them looked very good whereas the others were not going to win any prizes for presentation.
This is the best looking apple dumpling of the four and, needless to say, the one Mirinda had.
I reckon even dad would find them difficult to resist.
Scaring Emma did get rid of her hiccups at least for a while – and I can confirm the apply dumplings were scrumptious
My mouth is watering just looking at the picture and dad said good thing he wasn’t there he would have made Mirinda give him the best one, Lol. Poor Emma getting tossed in the air, still as long as it did the trick.
Love mum and dad xx