Apple Brown Betty

This is my idea of a perfect winter dessert. It's mostly apple, with a bit of lemon zest, sugar and stale bread, cooked down to a caramelised (if you look hard at the picture, you can see that on the lower right hand side) soft, crispy luscious mess. I've just had left overs for breakfast. The bread makes it quite filling (even though there's not to much there) and it finishes off a meal of soup perfectly. Did I mention it's easy and quick?

The Betty is a seriously old fashioned dessert - very often made with bread crumbs. I prefer to cut the bread into small dice (always sourdough) - I think it gets too mushy and confused with the crumbs. Almost certainly American (and southern at that), Mum tells me that Grandma used to make this when she was little but would cover the dessert for cooking with the apple peels (rather than paper and foil - see recipe).I first came across the recipe when reading In Pursuit of Flavour, by Edna Lewis - a much loved book and an inspiring woman. I often find myself wondering who was the Betty that inspired or created this if indeed there was one....

A couple of things in the cooking. I've found the best dish to use is cast iron - it holds the heat and gives you better caramelisation - in truth, it was my daughter Nessie who used the 24cm Le Creuset first, in a flash of inspiration. The lid makes it all so much easier. You'll still get great results using a china dish, which you cover (see recipe), but the cast iron gives you sticky, gooey yummy bits. You can use just about any apple, but one that collapse a bit are best - Granny Smith, Mutsu are both good and make sure to slice them very thinly - approx 3 mm. Freshly grate your nutmeg - it makes the world of difference, as much of those glorious flavours diminish rapidly after grating.  You can use any sugar, but I do prefer a crystallised sugar here and go for the larger demerara, but can't see why you couldn't give a rapadura a go if you'd like.

Do give it a try, and I hope you love it as much as I do. Oh, and before I go - yes, I agree the font is way too small, and we're in the works of updating the blog site....

Layered and ready for the oven

APPLE BROWN BETTY

 serves 4

If using a china dish, choose a dish with a good surface area rather than a similar capacity that is deeper with less surface area - 22cm diameter x 4.5cm depth, with a capacity of 5 cups is good.

4 – 5 pieces good sour – dough bread, crusts removed cut into 1 cm dice. You need 3 cups approx (gently packed) bread cubes.
½ cup raw or demarara sugar
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
grated zest from 1 lemon
40 gm unsalted butter - melted
800 gm apples – if bruised, extra to compensate

Pre heat oven to 200c or 180 if fan forced.

Combine the nutmeg and sugar in a medium size bowl – remove 2 tablespoons of this and set aside. Add the bread cubes to this bowl (that has the larger amount of sugar) together with the lemon zest and toss through to mix with the sugar and nutmeg. Add the melted butter and toss through to distribute the butter evenly.

Peel the apples and cut into quarters. Remove the core and cut into 3 – 4 slices, approx 1 cm thick. Place 1 cup of the bread cubes on the base of the baking dish or 24cm cast iron French oven. Layer half the apples over the bread, then top with ½ cup bread cubes. Layer the remaining apples and drizzle 60 ml water over them. Top with the remaining bread cubes, and sprinkle the reserved sugar and spice over this. It will be very, very full but will bake down. Pat down and best you can, and cover with a piece of baking paper and foil, with the foil on the outside, and the baking paper touching the apples.

Bake in oven for 40 – 45 mins, or until the apples are bubbling and noticeably cooked. Remove the foil and paper (or lid) and bake for a further 15 mins or until lightly golden, crispy and caramelised.