With the peach and melon season soon drawing to a close, I’m starting to think of autumn fruit. Actually, it’s a bit silly to refer to apples, pears and plums as autumn fruit as they are available all year round, from all over the world.
But I suppose I’m thinking of the home-grown new season English varieties, like Worcester Pearmain and Cox’s apples, Conference pears and Victoria plums, which start to arrive in the shops about now, although I’m sure other countries have their own seasonal favourites too.
With the change in the weather and with lazy Sundays on the beach being replaced by traditional family Sunday lunches, I’ve been looking for some puddings and desserts.
It’s still warm enough for ice cream, and kulfi, frozen in little conical-shaped moulds, is the Indian subcontinent’s equivalent. It is made with both ordinary milk and condensed milk and is usually flavoured with crushed cardamom and pistachio nuts.
However, cardamom is my least favourite spice, so I leave it out and replace the ordinary milk with coconut milk and the pistachios with toasted coconut. Sometimes fruit is added, and plums make an especially nice kulfi. Small yoghurt pots make good moulds. It doesn’t set quite so rock hard as home-made ice cream does sometimes, and it melts fairly quickly, so it’s best served as soon as it’s out of the mould.
Poached pears with chocolate sauce, or Poire belle Hélène to give it its posh name, is simple to make and sumptuous to eat.
You can poach the pears a day ahead and keep them submerged in the syrup, so you just need to make the easy chocolate sauce before serving with a generous scoop of ice cream. I don’t know who Hélène is, or was, but her dessert is certainly a winner.
For something a bit warmer, try the cranberry and apple streusel tart. The cranberry sauce gives the filling a nice sharpness which is offset by the sweet and crunchy streusel topping. It also benefits from being served with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over the top.
Then there’s an old-fashioned bread and butter pudding, although I don’t butter the bread nowadays (less calories), so it really should be called bread pudding. With a layer of stewed apples on the bottom, it’s golden and crispy, and the perfect end to the first Sunday lunch of the autumn season.
Apple bread and butter pudding
Serves 4
4 large Granny Smith apples
5 tbsp sugar
3 eggs
250ml cream
250ml milk
½ tsp grated nutmeg
8 large slices bread (not Maltese), crusts removed
80g sultanas
2 tbsp Demerara sugar
Peel, quarter and core the apples, then cut each quarter into two wedges. Put them into a pan, together with three tablespoons of the sugar and three tablespoons of water.
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and cook until the apples are tender. Tip them into a baking dish.
Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Whisk together the eggs, cream, milk, remaining sugar and nutmeg. Cut each slice of bread into two triangles and arrange them on the apples, scattering the sultanas among the slices, then pour the milk mixture evenly over.
Sprinkle with the Demerara and bake for about 35 to 40 minutes until it is puffy, golden and crisp. Serve warm with extra cream.
Cranberry and apple streusel tart
Serves 6
4 large Granny Smith apples
3 tbsp caster sugar
23-centimetre prebaked sweet pastry case
1 tbsp cornflour
Small jar of cranberry sauce
90g plain flour
60g light, soft brown sugar
60g butter
60g chopped, toasted walnuts or pecans
Icing sugar
Peel, core and thickly slice the apples into a pan, add two tablespoons of the sugar and two tablespoons of water and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer until the apples are just tender, then let them cool.
Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Stand the pastry case on a baking tray and mix the rest of the caster sugar and cornflour together. Turn the cranberry sauce into a small bowl, whisk it with a fork to break it up, then add it to the apples, together with the cornflour mixture and spread it all evenly into the pastry case.
Sift the flour into a bowl, stir in the brown sugar, then rub in the butter and add the nuts. Scatter the mixture over the apples and bake for about 30 to 35 minutes, until the topping is crisp and golden.
Dredge the top with icing sugar and serve warm with ice cream.
Plum kulfi
Serves 6
600g purple plums
90g sugar
400g can condensed milk
400ml can coconut milk
Toasted shredded coconut
Halve and stone the plums and put them in a pan with the sugar and two tablespoons of water.
Cook until the juice starts to run, then lower the heat and continue to cook until the plums have collapsed.
Tip them into a blender or processor and whizz to a purée, then push them through a sieve into a measuring jug and let them cool.
Mix together the condensed milk, coconut milk and 250ml of the plum purée, reserving the rest, then divide the mixture between six washed and dried yoghurt pots. Cover with cling film, then put them in the freezer and freeze until firm.
Pour a small puddle of plum purée on to each of six dessert plates.
Dip the frozen pots for a second in hot water and turn the kulfi out on to the plates.
Sprinkle with toasted coconut and serve immediately.
Poached pears with chocolate sauce
Serves 6
200g sugar
1 litre of water
1 lemon
1 vanilla pod, or 2 tsp vanilla extract
6 small, firm pears
120g dark chocolate, chopped
120ml cream
1 tbsp golden syrup
Knob of butter
Vanilla ice cream to serve
Put the sugar and water into a pan. Pare the zest from the lemon, avoiding the pith, and add to the pan, together with the squeezed lemon juice and vanilla pod.
Heat gently until the sugar dissolves, bring to the boil and let it bubble for a minute or two, then strain the syrup into a jug and discard the lemon peel. Dry the vanilla pod, if using, and save it for another use.
Peel the pears, leaving the stalks intact, then carefully excavate the cores from the base of the pears using the point of a potato peeler.
Put the pears into a deep pan and pour over enough syrup to cover them, then press a crumpled piece of foil over them to keep them submerged. Bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer until the pears are tender when tested with the point of a sharp knife. Leave to cool in the syrup.
Melt the chocolate with the cream and golden syrup in a bowl standing over gently simmering water, stirring as it melts, then beat in the butter.
Serve the pears with a scoop of ice cream and drizzle with warm chocolate sauce.