Crustless Apple Pie with Cinnamon

Crustless apple pie

I've been making this apple pie since my son was about 7 months and he loves it, in fact we all do. Super easy and healthy I usually make about 4 pies and freeze them to use later.

I should be more adventurous and make one with a crust but I've already made a lemon pie and this apple pie works every time.

Cook the apples for 15 mins

Here's what you need:
6 apples, peeled & cored. I used Granny Smith.
1 egg yolk
2-3 cinnamon sticks
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbspn lemon juice
ground cinnamon

Here's what you do:

Mix in the egg & sugar

Preheat your oven to 180C. Cook the apples in boiling water with the cinnamon sticks and lemon juice until soft (about 15 minutes). Drain well and add the apple to your food processor. Mix to the consistency you like, I puree it all.

Add in the egg yolk and sugar and mix again. Pour mix into 4 ramekin dishes, about 2/3 high, even out the surface and sprinkle with ground cinnamon. Bake in the oven for 20mins. When cooled, cover with cling wrap and freeze or eat straight away with ice-cream. Enjoy!

Raisin Crazy #1: Chewy Banana & Raisin Mini-Muffins

Delicious!

My husband's parents are coming to visit us for a week, they arrive tomorrow, so as part of the mandatory clean up and getting ready I decided to clean the fridge so I could write a shopping list. Hiding in the back corner  I found a large packet of raisins. Who knows how long they had been there for! They were still within their 'eat before' date so I decided to cook as many recipes as I could with them. The problem is that I really don't like raisins and if I have to eat them I try to just swallow them whole.

So rather than search my cookbooks I turned to the internet today. I adapted the recipe used from SparkRecipes. I have never made chewy muffins before and these are definitely chewy so be warned. They were also so incredibly tasty that I ate 3 in a row, raisins and all! The recipe made 24 mini-muffins and 9 medium sized. I have frozen most of mine to use as snacks.

The original recipes lists sugar and olive oil as ingredients. I completely left the sugar out (who needs it!) and used apple sauce as a substitute for olive oil.

waiting to go in the oven

Here's what you need:
1.5 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup apple sauce or 1/4 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch of both cinnamon and nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 medium bananas, mashed
1/3 cup raisin
1/2 tablespoon honey
**1/4 cup sugar if you want


Here's what you do:

Place your mini cupcake papers inside your muffin tin and preheat your oven to 180C. In hindsight I would have used foil muffin holders or a silicone tray as mine became a bit stuck after baking.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl: baking soda, salt, flour, and combine well. Make a hole in the middle of the mix with a wooden spoon and then add your 'wet' ingredients: milk, banana and vanilla extract. Mix all together well. I use a KitchenAid (*love*) but by hand is just as easy. Add the raisins. While I was watching the mix combine I thought that honey would make a nice extra so I quickly drizzled about a half a tablespoon of honey into the mix.

Fill your muffin papers up to about 2/3 of the way or a little more. Mine were nearly to the top because I had so much mixture. Bake in the oven for about 17 minutes. Mine browned quite quickly and I panicked a bit and took one batch out too early and they were still quite doughy.

I was too impatient to let them completely cool before I tasted one and as a result the muffin stuck to the paper. It shouldn't happen once they are completely cooled. That's it, super easy and tasty! My mother-in-law has promised to teach me her amazing Lemon Tart recipe next week so stay tuned.

Chocolate & Cinnamon Wontons

Seriously tasty!

I think I have just found my new favourite dessert. After an early dinner and once Oscar was in bed I quickly decided to try a recipe I have been staring at for a couple of months in my Donna Hay: Fast, Fresh, Simple cookbook. I just love the look of Donna Hay's book and love turning through the pages.

I love dark chocolate and cinnamon but was a bit weary of the wonton mix. Well, all up it took me 10mins from start to finish and I am betting by years end I would have eaten more wontons than I can remember. The count is at 8 so far!

Here's what you need: (to make 16, I only made 8 so halved all ingredients)

16 wonton wrappers
40g melted butter
16 small squares of dark chocolate
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons caster sugar

Chocolate squares in place

Here's what you do:

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a tray with baking paper. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl or cup.

With a brush (I actually used a new paintbrush as I didn't have a kitchen brush, must buy!)   coat the 3 edges of the wontons with melted butter and place a small chocolate square on one half. Place it close to the front edge as otherwise the when you close the wonton it won't seal properly. Fold over the wontons and press the edges together to seal.

Put the wontons on the baking tray, brush over with butter and sprinkle with the sugar & cinnamon mix. Bake for 8mins or until golden.

These were seriously delicious and my husband and i ate them so quickly. Serve with ice-cream, strawberries. Also, you could experiment with putting other treats in the wontons. On Donna Hay's site she has a recipe for Apple & Chocolate wontons - yum!

Smells so good... yum!