Puffed Apple Yorkshire Pudding

Quiet Monday night. A craving for a homey apple dessert. Ta-dah!

A year and a half ago, I made Bill Granger's puffed apple pancake from his book Holiday. (Blogged here). Not sure what went wrong with the recipe (or if the fault was on my end), but I was singularly unimpressed by it, finding it "bland and doughy". Blergh. However, the idea of a crisp, puffy dough baked with apples is a winning one, and I found myself making my own version of it last night.

I started by chopping up a couple of granny smiths, and cooking them in butter, vanilla sugar and half a scraped-out-vanilla pod (as I did with Nigella's Sweetheart Croutes). If you're planning on eating the finished product with maple syrup or honey, you could probably omit the sugar totally.

For the dough, I made a half-quantity of Nigella's batter for sweet Yorkshire pudding (and if you want to see a truly puffed-up baked pancake, then look no further than the time I made this pudding in March '06 - here!).

While the batter was resting and the apples were frying, I had the oiled pie-dish heating up in the 230C oven. When everything was ready, I tipped the apples into the sizzling-hot dish, and poured the batter over. (Tip - pour the batter from a jug to avoid messy spillage).


Then back into the oven it went for an agonizing 20 minutes. I love how when you make Yorkshire pudding, you can see the batter crispening up and rising, millimetre by millimetre.


Profile shot. Please notice my awesome coffee mugs in the background.

Immodest of me to say, I know, but the pudding was frikkin AWESOME! The batter had a tantalising contrast between crispy edges and doughy interior, and there were heaps of delicious, vanilla-flecked cooked apples throughout. It was easier to make than an apple crumble (no rubbing butter & flour between your fingers, just some lazy whisking required), and the generous amount of dough made it so much more comforting.

We had it with a thick dusting of icing sugar, but I think it would be perfect with a good quality vanilla ice-cream (Mövenpick for choice!). Just imagine the ice-cream melting oozily into the doughy parts of the batter. Yum..


It was a 20cm pie dish, and in ordinary circumstances, I'd say this pudding would feed 4. Last night, it only fed 2. Shhh...