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Baked Apples for Children
Take a large earthen jar, and fill it to within three inches of the top with well-wiped apples of any sort in the house. Neither peel them nor remove the stalks. Pour over them, so as to cover them completely, a mixture of treacle or brown sugar and water. If the apples are windfalls, you may allow a little extra sweetening. Put with them some pieces of orange or lemon-peel, and a few cloves. Cover the jar; leave it for three or four hours in a cool oven. If the oven is too hot, the liquid will boil over or evaporate, and the apples be dried up or burnt. Allow one for each person.
A slow oven-stewed whole apple, cooked in a covered crock rather than a baking dish. The one thing that decides success is oven heat: this is a barely-warm oven held for hours, not a bake.
- Oven temperatureA "cool oven" in a book of this period is usually reckoned at somewhere around 250-300F. Much hotter than that and the syrup will boil up under the lid and either escape or dry out, which is exactly the failure the recipe warns of.
- The vesselAn earthen jar means a deep glazed earthenware crock. A heavy covered casserole or Dutch oven works the same way; the point is thick walls that even out the heat and a cover to hold the steam -- the recipe says only to cover the jar.
- TreacleBritish treacle here is most likely black treacle, molasses-like in flavour, though golden syrup was also sold under the name. Black treacle gives a much darker, more bitter syrup than the brown sugar alternative, so start with less if you use it; golden syrup is pale and mild.
- ProportionsNo quantity of syrup is given because the apples are simply covered. Mix water with treacle or brown sugar to taste and pour in enough to submerge the fruit.
- WindfallsFallen apples are usually less ripe and more acid, hence the extra sweetening. Cut away bruised or broken flesh before packing the jar, since damaged fruit collapses and clouds the syrup.
- Peel, stalks and coresLeaving the skins on keeps the apples whole through several hours of heat. The cores and stalks stay in, so the fruit needs eating with a spoon and a plate rather than out of hand, and for small children it is worth lifting out the core after cooking.
- SpiceThe recipe gives no number of cloves; a few is enough, since whole cloves in a closed crock over three hours are far stronger than they look. Pare the citrus peel thinly, with none of the white pith.
- Yield and servingOne apple per person, served warm or cold with a spoonful of the syrup, and cream or custard if you like. The apples keep several days covered in their own liquid in the refrigerator.