Toffee Apple Pudding

The rain has been falling relentlessly all day long. It has been cold and windy and it has definitely not been a day to venture out. But this is hardly unusual for Ireland in November!!! When the weather is so inhospitable I crave hot and comforting things to eat.
 
Halloween was only the other night and the children have just about come down from their sugar-induced highs brought on by all the sweets that they gathered when they were out haunting the neighbourhood.
 
One of the things that we regularly ate at Halloween when I was a child were toffee covered apples. It occurred to me that a variation on this theme was the perfect combination to try out today - cooked slices of apple in a sticky, citrusy sauce topped with a light sponge and finished off with a good dollop of lightly whipped cream. Sometimes you just have to do these things in the interests of culinary research!
 

Ingredients:

Pudding:
4 large bramley apples – peeled, core and cut into thick slices
225g self-raising flour
75g caster sugar
125g butter
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
2 large eggs
150ml milk

Sauce:

75g dark muscovado sugar

50g butter

100ml orange juice (from the orange used earlier)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/Fan 180C/Gas 6.
2. Lightly butter the bottom of a shallow oven-proof baking dish. Place the apples in the buttered dish.
3. To make the sponge, cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add the orange zest and mix thoroughly. Next, mix in the eggs, followed by the flour and milk. Pile the sponge on top of the apples in the buttered dish. Using a spatula spread out the sponge mixture to completely cover the apples.
4. Next place all the ingredients for the sauce into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Immediately turn off the heat under the saucepan and carefully pour the sauce over the sponge topped apples. This may sound weird, but as it bakes the sponge will rise to cover the apples which will be covered in the sticky sauce. Bake for 35 minutes.

Serve with softly whipped cream or custard.

Serves 6.