The apples are starting to form. It’s so wonderful having a little Apple tree in the garden. But wow does it produce fruit with a kick. I think the word I am looking for is – sharp. They definitely benefit from a heap load of sugar.

It’s all about patience. These apples won’t be ready for picking until October. Any sooner and even sugar can’t make them edible. Somethings are even beyond sugar.

Last night I tried to make myself a Moroccan stew from one of my cookbooks. Cooking when your beyond tired is always a tad risky. Especially as I produce weapons grade food at the best of times…. I tried to carefully follow the ingredients. Second last ingredient rather surprised me. 200g of sugar. In a stew …. OK….. the chef will know what he is talking about. And the final ingredient vanilla essence. Clearly chef knows best but really. Don’t need to read the preparation details. Bung it all in the slow cooker, stir and leave it.

Well 6 hours later and the stew was ready. It just tasted so odd. Basically a very sweet, strange tasting stew. This can’t be right. So I got the recipe book out and looked to see what I could have done so wrong. How can this be. No mention of sugar or vanilla. I surely didn’t imagine those things. All I can think of is that when my back was turned the recipe book page flipped over and shifted to something like a cake recipe. So I basically tried to cook a Moroccan Stew and Cake combo. Maybe it’s the future of cooking.

Maybe that’s a game changing idea for the upcoming Great Bloggers Bake-off. Start baking a cake recipe and then half way through the preparation stage I randomly change the recipe page. That’s on the edge baking…

The Great Bloggers Bake-off takes place in July (18th & 19th). But if you fancy it, please start baking as soon as you feel the urge. Clearly I have….

Remember to send in your creations (you can start early) to Mel so that they can be featured in the Great Bake-off.

crushedcaramel@gmail.com

Let’s see if we can literally blow Mel’s socks off with our creations and monstrosities.

93 thoughts on “On the edge baking”

  1. If I am lucky enough to have my own place, I would like a small apple tree. It would be eating apples and I hope it would be just as nice as my friends tree that I tasted.
    He doesn’t know what variety it is, with it already being there, when he rented the propery. But produces a good amount.

    I didn’t know apples could be picked in October, so that nice to know if I had the room for a second tree, for cooking apples.

    You be making some apple pies then, when they are ready? Or apple cake.

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  2. Last year the deer got all the apples which was fine by me. This year my house mate says we must have some too. Back in the freezing boarding school I was taught how to make apple crumble . I daresay I could concoct something and we do have Birds custard so if I drown it in that, it will do. Your stew sounded a bit different. But even my Mum who was an extraordinary cook screwed up. She once put baking soda instead of baking powder in her biscuits. They were strange too, but we ate them! I would never have known there was a difference between the soda and the powder!!!

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  5. Uh-oh! It sounds like a sweet stew! But, who knows, you might have created the next big invention by accident 🙂
    Declan would love his own apple tree so much. I can’t tell you how many apple seeds he has planted from the apples he eats. We finally googled how long it would take for one of his seeds to grow into a tree and bear fruit. 5-10 years was just too much for his little heart to handle. 🙂

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  7. Really entertaining blog and I agree totally that you could be on to something.
    My gran once put salt in a rice pudding and my aunt put hot custard on a jelly really fun times.
    I hope that you are staying safe and well 😊🤗

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      1. Cinnamon. Maybe there was vanilla? Knowing me? I never had any and prob improvised but there was Cinnamon. And the only reason I stopped making this?? The older girl dropped the tagine pot on the tiles and I couldnae afford a new one so that was that…

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      3. Well…..the good news is, even the professionals struggle to make key lime pie.
        I don’t know about the contestants. I think they are over ambitious. Whatever the challenge is. there seem to be one or two teams who make a terrible mess! The critique is harsh! I am glad our judge is Jeanne.

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  14. I made another banana bread but forgot to take a picture. It tastes okay, better than before except since we were low on sugar so I used half the amount in the recipe. But it looked weird. All misshapen and quiet dark on the top. Next time I will try to remember to take a snap.

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      3. My pleasure, Gary, and for sure, there are more to come. You totally inspired me to share more of the country and region I live. Thank you for that!

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  21. You saved yourself a huge step – you did dinner and dessert all in one step! That’s quite a time saver right there. LOL

    Not that long after hubby and I got married he decided to make stew for supper while I was at work. So, he proudly serves it up I take a spoonful and….what the hell is this? It was sweet. How did he manage that? So, naturally I asked. He was a tad defensive. “I did it the same as you always do,” he said. Well after some discussion we found out the difference. He’d thickened it with icing sugar (powdered sugar)!!! He mistakenly grabbed the wrong container. I used corn starch (not any more but I did then) and they look similar – only no matter how much “corn starch” he added it just wouldn’t thicken up so he kept adding more. It’s a story we still laugh about all these years later. Remind me to tell you about the raw egg in the tea some time. Kitchen screw ups are something we all do.

    This did amuse me, let me know how the great bake off goes.

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  26. You know, I could tooootally see this happening with me. Some of my crockpot cookbooks cram four recipes onto a single page. It’s very easy to mix recipes up. I have to cover up the page with hot wheels cars or whatever else is handy just to make sure I can only read the one recipe. 🙂

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