Apple desserts for the weekend: what to bake with your garden haul
Swedish gardens are heavy with apples. Which varieties hold their shape in the oven, which melt into sauce, and four desserts to bake this weekend.
Walk down any street of villas in Sweden this month and you will see it: trees bent under fruit, boxes of free apples by the gate, and neighbours begging you to take a bag. It is the best kind of problem. Apples are the backbone of autumn baking, and a weekend is just long enough to turn a basket of them into something wonderful.
But not every apple behaves the same way in the oven. Some keep their shape and turn jammy at the edges. Others collapse into a soft purée in minutes. Knowing which is which is the secret to a good dessert.
Which apples bake well
For baking you want apples with good acidity and firm flesh. Sweet, soft apples taste flat once cooked and often fall apart. Summer varieties are lovely eaten fresh but rarely keep, so for autumn baking look to the later ones.
- Belle de Boskoop: large, russeted and very tart. Holds its shape and has plenty of flavour after baking. One of the best baking apples there is.
- Ingrid Marie: a red Danish variety much loved in Skåne. Firm, aromatic and good both raw and baked.
- Cox Orange: small, aromatic and sweet-sharp. Excellent in tarts and for poaching.
- Aroma: a Swedish favourite. Juicy and fragrant, good for cakes and crumbles.
- Soft or mealy apples: do not throw them away. Cook them down into apple sauce or apple butter, where softness is exactly what you want.
Bella's tip: Mix varieties. A tart, firm apple gives structure, and a sweeter, softer one melts around it into a natural sauce. Two or three kinds in one dessert taste much more interesting than one.
Four desserts from the library
Start with the showstopper. A tarte tatin needs firm apples, as they cook for a long time in caramel before the pastry goes on. Boskoop or Cox are ideal. Pack the apples in tightly, because they shrink as they cook. Let the tart rest for a few minutes after baking, then flip it out with confidence. Hesitate and the caramel sets.
Recipe: tarte tatin
For a quick Saturday treat, try the apple pinsa. A light, crisp base is spread with mascarpone and covered with cinnamon-sugar apple slices and honey-caramelised pecans. It is ready in the time it takes to make coffee, and it is somewhere between a pizza and an apple pie.
Recipe: apple pinsa with cinnamon and pecans
My nonna's kind of cake is the Italian apple cake: a soft, lemony sponge made with olive oil and butter, so full of apple slices there is barely room for the batter. It keeps for days and tastes even better on the second.
Recipe: italian apple cake
And for a slow Sunday, baked apples in the Italian slow-food spirit. Whole poached Cox apples are baked over a buttery crumb of rusks, rye and bread with muscovado, cinnamon and a splash of Calvados. Serve them warm with cold cream or vanilla sauce.
Recipe: slow food apples
Storing the rest of the harvest
Late apples keep for weeks, even months, if you treat them well. Pick only perfect, unbruised fruit for storing, and wrap each one loosely in newspaper. Keep them in a single layer in a cool, dark, slightly humid place such as a cellar or garage that stays frost-free. Check them every week. One rotting apple spoils its neighbours fast. Keep apples away from potatoes and other vegetables too, because the ethylene they give off speeds up ripening and sprouting.
Bruised or windfall apples should be used right away. Peel, chop and cook them into a quick compote with a little sugar and lemon, then freeze it in portions for porridge, yoghurt or a crumble in January.
Tart and firm for the oven, soft and sweet for the pot. Every apple has a job.
