The Apple Project

I'm not sure how The Apple Project started, but like many great projects, it just started itself... 

Maybe because apples are so delicious in winter? They are such a melty, cinnamon-y and comforting fruit. 

I made most of these apple projects from apples sourced from the Newcastle Farmers Market. They are such amazing people and the apples are just so much better than those in supermarkets. I also love that they are not packaged, and the apples have no stickers!  

May 28: Apple Cake 

My office weeks are great - I catch up with the trainees I'm supervising, talk with colleagues on their projects, read the latest papers, do my admin work... and usually I bake on Fridays! I rarely bake cakes, so this was quite a feat for me. 

3 June: Apple Pie

I love pie, most of all - latticing pie! I brought this pie to the Merewether ensemble, where we enjoyed it after music. The clarinettist always proclaims to not like sweets, but he gobbled his down before everyone else did! 

6 June: Vegan apple cake

I was on ward service on this Sunday and made this vegan upside down apple cake. I par-cooked the apples the night before and whipped up the cake batter in the morning before work. We ate this in the sunshine on the ICU balcony for team lunch, with a pour of maple syrup that I got in Canada on my last trip in 2019. 

 

11 June: Apple cinnamon scroll

This was Barney's birthday, so of course I had to make some kind of sourdough thing! I brought this to work at the Private where the nurses oohed and aahed over the smell of apples wafting out from my office. What a morning tea treat it was! and happy birthday to Barney!

 

19 June: Apple strudel

Of the entire project, this was probably the only spectacular flop. The pastry was way too hard and set like concrete after I mis-read the temperature dial and baked it at 100 degrees. Anyway my string quartet was so forgiving and we ate it anyway after dousing it with liberal amounts of yoghurt. Incidentally, this was the last time my quartet met before the lockdown. 

23 June: Traditional apple slice

I thought I'd make something "Australian" and followed the traditional apple shortbread slice recipe from Not Quite Nigella. Had these with my piano duet friend along with some Mozart violin sonatas. 

1 Jul: Fancy apple frangipane tart with salted caramel drizzle 

This was the most complex of all the apple recipes I tried - I made a traditional sweet shortcrust pastry, a frangipane filling, topped it with apples and made a salted caramel. I made this with my friend's daughter, who loves baking. My friend said that her daughter wouldn't want to actually make it but she did every single step with me! Children are amazing like that if you give them the opportunity to try things out.  

10 Jul: Bavarian apple torte

By this point, Sydney had been in lockdown for a couple of weeks. My friend sent me this recipe from a Hetty McKinnon cookbook she has and I said I would give it a go for my apple project. The inside was set lusciously soft like a custard. 

16 Jul: Stromboli 

Friday baking at the Private again. I saw the recipe for a stromboli one time and I was curious about how it would work. Turns out that stromboli is a made up food by Italian Americans! I stuffed this with apples, caramelised onions and gruyere.  

18 Jul: The vagina project 

I have a recurring dream where I am teaching people how to cook things, and one dream in July I was baking breads shaped like genitalia. I drew the design as soon as I woke up, and I thought I'd try making it. This wasn't the actual design in the dream, but hey I had to cross it with apples since I had so many apples at home!

22 Jul: Birthday cake 

Well, this year I was a bit iffy about spending my birthday alone in lockdown, but it turned out just fine in the end. I baked this cake for myself and took it to work. It was the only one-bowl easy recipe that I could muster up in my lacklustre state, but it was pretty good! 

30 Jul: Apple strudel, take 2

I made this with store-bought filo pastry. The filling was caramelised apple, walnut and raisins - it worked out a lot better than take 1's concrete strudel, and so much easier too!

8 Aug: Apple rosti 

I lost the picture, but I grated a granny smith into my potato rosti and it lent a nice sweetness to it! 

13 Aug: Vegan apple muffins

I make a lot of vegan things because one of my close friends is vegan. In lockdown she became my singles buddy so when we went for a walk along the sea, I whipped up these super quick muffins. They were a bit dry but we enjoyed them with a cup of tea. 

 

20 Aug: Apple banana muffins

One day I peeled 30kg of over-ripe bananas for Ozharvest and took a few home, then I made these apple banana muffins that I ended up dropping off contact-less for a few friends. Baking really kept me going through this lockdown.. 

29 Aug: Vegan apple pie

I thought this was going to be the end of the apple project, the grand finale being my favourite pie. I made this with copha - not recommended cos the chunks did not grate well and it was super hard to incorporate into the pastry! It was hard work but super delicious in the end. 

 

6 Sep: Challah

Alas, we finally reached the end of the apple project. The finale turned out to be a challah for Rosh Hashanah, stuffed with apples sweetened with maple syrup. I used a yudane method to make the bread super soft, and it was dreamy and pillowy. 

So that's it, the end of the Apple Project. I've moved onto a different one now, maybe next winter there will be a second apple project, let's see! 

In My Kitchen: September 2021

Oh August. I wrote a huge introduction on how difficult the lockdown has been this month, but upon reading it again I've decided to stay focused on IMK - I am just so happy that the first of the month rolls on by and it's time to revisit my food photos again. 

In my garden...

I have taken a lot of solace in my snow peas, which have flourished during August. There's nothing like picking a few peas to munch on every day after work. 

I've had a lot of success growing radish - it grows quickly and consistently gives me pockets of pepperiness for my salads. 

The rainbow chard and kale took a long time to get started - maybe over a month in the 1-2 inch height stage, before they finally went through a growth spurt. I adore the vibrant colour! 

 

In my kitchen...

I made wontons with some of the turnips from my garden. The greens are kind of spiky but they mince down well - the traditional Shanghainese wonton is made with a vegetable called shepherd's purse, and this was pretty close.  

I started this oyster mushroom farm, which was a birthday present. What a fun weekend project it was, and now it's hiding in a corner waiting to grow. 

I had a profusion of super sour mandarins from the farmer's market so I made a few jars of mandarin jam which turned out really well. I've been having them on everything from toast to pancakes to straight out of the jar. 

On the baking front... aka. Crazy complex baking projects that kept me sane

One weekend I made this zebra bread... it's actually a vegan recipe made with tangzhong, so it kept soft for quite a few days. I did have to adapt it for sourdough, but it worked well.

Another weekend I made leopard bread... 

These were vegan croissants I made for my friend B. I did some research into the science of the butter block in laminating dough and it was super interesting - one needs ~80% fat and so I had to melt copha (100% fat) and nuttelex (60% fat) to make my own vegan 80% blend, which I then set together to make the "butter" block! It laminated quite well and the texture was great, though the flavour was not as rich as butter. 

I made these steamed breast buns at the request of my high school friends (when we get together we are very juvenile!) I made a Hokkaido milk tangzhong dough thinking I would bake them, but I ended up steaming them instead. I made a custard filling for the inside, hoping they would squeeze out, but the egg ended up setting during the steaming process. The chocolate nipples were delicious!

Onto the Food and Music series... 

Due to the lockdown, there has been very little music making in August. I made this black forest cake for my piano duet friend who had her birthday during the lockdown. She is my singles buddy so we were able to celebrate her birthday together. Afterwards we played Schubert's Death and the Maiden - I know, not exactly the prime birthday choice, but it reflects my inner turbulence. 

My string quartet is still meeting once or twice a week on zoom. We drink tea, knit and chat about what we are doing in the lockdown (mostly cooking, knitting and jigsaws). I am very grateful for the support that they have given me in this time, and we are very much looking forward to playing music together again. 

And finally, the curveball. A few months ago, I signed up to volunteer for Ozharvest, an organisation which focuses on the minimisation of food waste and food rescue. I have been cooking in the Ozharvest kitchen where we prepare meals for charities serving the homeless and disadvantaged people. It is inspiring to work with other volunteers who are passionate about the cause. It's amazing to see a pile of food that would have otherwise gone to landfill being turned into something that feeds people in need. When we sit down to have staff lunch, it is a nice way to connect with the food that we are cooking - we have it for lunch, and someone else will be having it for dinner.

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the IMK series. Thanks Sherry!