A baked apple, bursting at the seams

A lovely baked apple.

Now, this is sweetly nostalgic for me. Really, it's the autumn Sunday lunch pudding of my childhood -- and I expect I would have been sent to pick the apples. So..

Allow one large cooking apple each. Wash, but don't peel -- unless the apples are pretty elderly and past their first bloom: it'll still be nice, but not what I intended. Using a corer, take out the core, scraping out any seeds that get missed in the process. Now, put your apples on a baking dish with just a little water in the bottom. Fill the core of each apple with sultanas or raisins, a good pinch of soft brown sugar and the same of nutmeg. Another fat pinch of sugar all round. Now, into a medium hot oven they go and then cook away for around an hour. You'll know they are done because the skins will be starting to split and a lovely apple snow will be visible within. The important thing is not to cook them too fast, otherwise they won't be tender to the core. You can top up the water level if your pan burns dry and you'll find that there's a lovely, sticky apple syrup underneath each fruit. A toffee apple taste, just gently spiced.

Serve these with more brown sugar, as liked, plus cream or custard -- or just as is. And these also make a good breakfast in bed for your loved one. I mean, a lingering kind of breakfast.

In autumn, may I suggest you add blackberries to the hole in the apple? Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. My favourite.

The smell of your baking apple as it cooks has much to recommend it, too. Makes me want to reach for slippers just thinking about it--you know; carpet slippers, very down at heel, like Badger's in The Wind in the Willows. It just smells, well, cosy. And however twee that sounds, cosy's what I want.