Would you Adam and Eve it?

An accidental entry for the Confined A-Z challenge.

A is for apple

My household are the lucky owners of an apple tree. We don't know what variety the apples are. They are a kind that are probably nominally eating apples but are actually better cooked. They need a little bit of sweetening but not much.

I mentioned once before that my signature dish is crumble, but apparently not everyone wants to eat crumble every day. An easy alternative is Eve's pudding. If you have never had it, it's like apple crumble but with a spongy topping instead of a crunchy topping.

We had enough apples to serve 4. I didn't weigh them, so I don't know how much that is. Once peeled cored and sliced, given 2 minutes in the microwave and then mixed with a dessertspoon of maple syrup, they fitted nicely in the lightly-greased baking dish with enough space left for the sponge.

B is for butter and beaten egg

Recipes for Eve's pudding vary. I used 50g butter, 50g caster sugar (I had golden caster sugar), 1 egg and 75g self-raising flour, and followed the creaming method. I added some mixed spice and a pinch of salt (because the butter was unsalted).

C is for curdled

Sometime I'm an impatient cook and sometimes I'm just incompetent. I'm not sure which it was today, but I managed to add too much egg too quickly to insufficiently creamed butter and sugar, leaving the contents of my mixing bowl looking somewhat curdled. I decided it would probably be fine, though and persevered with the rest of the egg and then the flour.

Lightly folding in flour is not one of my skills at the best of times. Today my wielding of the wooden spoon was heavy-handed even for me, in an attempt to make up for the curdling. I sprinkled in half a teaspoon of baking powder in the vague hope that it would stop the sponge being too heavy. The mix was rather stiff (and my egg had been on the small side), so I added a bit of milk too. The result looked reassuringly like cake mixture.

I scraped the sponge mixture fairly evenly on top of the apple and sprinkled over a teaspoon of caster sugar. The oven was on at 160C fan anyway, so in the pudding went.

After some debate, we decided that C should also be for custard, which is the traditional accompaniment to Eve's pudding. (Our custard was bought ready-made, of course.)

Ready to go in the oven

D is for ...?

After 25 minutes, the sponge seemed pretty firm and springy, and a nice golden colour. All that remained was to decide whether D should stand for disgusting, dubious or delicious.

I'm pleased to reveal that the unanimous verdict was that D is for delicious.

E is for Eve's pudding