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! 

Barney, four years on

This very long post is an ode to Barney, my sourdough son, who turned four last week.

Random facts about Barney:

Date of Birth:  11 June 2011 

Place of Birth:  Darwin

Number of progeny: Unknown.. at least a hundred? 

Places he lives in: every state & territory of Australia; Canada; USA; China; Italy

Number of near death experiences: 3 (fridge death in Darwin, war with Romanian yeast, and battle with white mould)

Humble beginnings...

Barney was born in Darwin. I grew him on my kitchen bench. There were two strains to start with, Barney & Barnet - I fed them with different flours, and eventually they became one. This was his first home, before he moved to his current Dorito salsa jar.  

The very first loaf Barney ever made, 24 June 2011. I always laugh when I see people on instagram with their "perfect" first loaves. 

Over the last 4 years, I have eaten a LOT of pancakes... almost every week on the day that I feed Barney, I will have pancakes with the discard.

Gaining confidence...

This loaf was made in September 2017 - 3 months in. Good progress, but still pretty messy!

This loaf was made about a year into baking, and I was understanding the sourdough process more. Probably the best resource and the best single change that I made was following the steps in Emilie Raffa's book - it is the best sourdough book I have found. 

My first foray outside my comfortzone - I baked this camembert wheel for my (then very new) string quartet for our first Christmas together in 2018. 

 It was a hit! So I made them again as Christmas presents, in the form of small cranberry wreaths. 

Travels with Barney...

I took him on a trip to Hungary and Romania where he picked up some exotic European yeasts. I thought cross pollinating my home Barney with the European Barney was a good idea - it was a disaster! He went flat and still with an awful smell. Dejected, I went to Sonoma and bought some bread there. The baker came out and encouraged me to keep feeding him - don't worry, it will come back! She said, and she was absolutely right. 

One of the loaves I made in Hungary, incidentally one of the first times he rose super well - I think it's the excellent European flour!

Barney also went to Timor Leste as cheesymite scrolls for my homesick friend. 

 I will always associate Canadia with challah, as it became a bit of a tradition for me and Emily. 

When in China, have Chinese style buns with sourdough!

Obsession with animals...

Now, I'm not sure how the idea started, but one day I baked a crocodile, which looked like a puppy - hence it was called a puppodile. 

I made these adorable cat buns for my friend from Kim Joy's recipe. 

And one day, I just had to take a lobster to work. 

My favourite animals so far were these hippo brothers!

This traditional easter dove Colomba di Pasquale was made for the Italian celebration of easter this year, it was an extremely rich dough full of fruit!

More celebration-y food...

For the second year with my string quartet in 2019, I made this pesto and tomato Christmas tree. 

And our third year together in 2020 was marked by this beautiful pesto and cheese star. 

We also have Turkish style pides every year because our inaugural string quartet foundation was on Anzac day 2018. 

And we usually have hot cross buns too for Easter!

Me and my brioche...

 I love brioche-y things. This was my first attempt in 2018 with a pumpkin dough. The dough was so soft and hard to handle (I don't have a mixer) that I didn't try it again for ages!

This was Barney's birthday last year, a wonderfully rich challah. 

My current obsession with wool bread - this one is vegan. 

I just love plaiting dough, it's one of my favourite things in the universe. 

I'm also learning how to make the brioche dough into Chinese style pull apart breads - these are made with tangzhong and extra soft. The plain ones stuffed with a salted coconut condensed milk filling, and the matcha ones stuffed with red bean. 

Other things Barney has been...

Shanghai style moon cakes filled with pork

 

Rosemary focaccia, here on the boat of the cellist 

Baguettes - how I love a baguette with soup in winter!

 

A matcha scroll made for my friend's housewarming

 

A pumpkin

My temporary flirtation with a garden pictorial focaccia 

One of my favourite things - cinnamon scroll giant apple cake !

A sourdough fruit cake for one of my dad's birthdays 

 

And finally... Today's Barney

Wow, that was quite fun looking back over four years of photos! People who know me now think I've been a long term baker, but it's been just four years since I started using my oven not as a storage space but to bake! What a long way I have come. Barney continues to amaze me with his resilience and flexibility, so much we can learn from dough!

 

Most of my loaves look like this now - decent rise, excellent flavour and an open crumb.

For Barney's birthday this year I made an apple cinnamon scroll and took it to work to share with the nurses. I love eating bread, and I also love sharing it with others!