The increasingly chilly days and dark evenings have got me craving comfort food. This traditional recipe for sticky and sweet baked apples is just the thing.

First choose your apples. I went for quirkily shaped British eating apples that had lost their crunch, but would be perfect for cooking. Core them using a knife, or if like me you have one in a draw full of miscellaneous utensils, use a corer. You can score the apples around the middle to reduce the chance of them splitting.

Now, make your mix to fill the centre. Basically the filling consists of a bit of butter with sugar in as many forms as you can think of! I didn't have any bramble jelly so substituted a Christmas fruit conserve that added a soft touch of spice. For each apple use:

2 teaspoons dried fruit
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 an ounce butter
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon bramble jelly
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Fill your apples, then pop in a 'moderately hot' oven (I use 180C in my fan oven) and bake for 40 minutes or until tender.

Let them cool down a bit before eating, as they really hold their heat. Pour the extra caramelised sauce on top and enjoy! They may not look like the most fancy dessert - rustic would be the nicest way to describe them! But, they certainly do the trick when you want an easy to make autumnal pudding that tastes delicious.

Do you have any traditional autumn recipes to recommend?

2 eggs
3 oz caster sugar
2 oz self raising flour
1 tbsp hot water
jam to fill
icing sugar for dusting

Cook for 7-9 minutes at 220 C . You can check it's done by pressing the sponge lightly. When it's ready it should bounce back up.

Turn it out onto an icing sugared piece of baking parchment. Cover liberally with jam. I used my homemade blackcurrant and raspberry, which you can find the recipe for here.

And now it's time to roll! Make a shallow cut about 1 cm from one short edge and fold this over to get started. Then just go for it, lifting the parchment underneath and rolling it through that.

Dust with icing sugar, et voila, you have your finished roll! Pop on a vintage plate and leave to cool. Or if you can't wait, cut yourself a nice big spiral slice and enjoy!

I think there's is something strangely satisfying about all rolled sweet treats - jam roly poly, cinnamon whorls, lemon and sugar pancakes...

What do you think - do you share my fondness for all things spiral? (or is it just me!)

For my latest vintage recipe experiment I took inspiration from one of my antique finds - Sargent's Gem Chopper, which I blogged about a few weeks ago. The 1899 chopper came with a cookbook and I enjoyed browsing through it to find a recipe to try. This one caught my eye:

The combination of flavours, as well as the ombre effect that is so in fashion at the moment, intrigued me.

As it was such an old recipe I was unsure what size of cup to use for measuring. My research didn't prove conclusive, so I just grabbed the nearest vintage cup and hoped that it would work out!

My cake mixture curdled rather a lot. A very thorough whisk sorted this out, but if you try out this recipe it might be an idea to mix the ingredients in a different order.

I decided for full authenticity I ought to use the Gem Chopper itself. It surprised me how effectively it chopped the golden raisins (I must confess to doing a little dance when I realised it was working). Chopping the chocolate was rather less efficient - it stuck to the inside. I guess chocolate has probably changed a lot in the past 100 years.

There were no instructions for how to flavour the lemon layer so I added the grated zest of a whole lemon. I also put some cocoa powder in my chocolate layer to make it a shade darker.  Cooking information was also absent - I did mine at 180ºC for 25 minutes.

Here is the cake in all its graduating glory. It turned out subtle but I like it.

To make the cake live up to its Tit Tat Toe name I had a game of Noughts and Crosses with myself in chocolate frosting. Naturally it was a stalemate!

So that concludes my second vintage recipe experiment. To my surprise the unusual combination of chocolate, raisin and lemon flavours went well together and the texture was good too, almost like a light steamed pudding. The process was pretty fun as well - it is always exciting to try something new and it to actually work!

I'm already looking forward to my next experiment. I'd love suggestions for a vintage recipe to try...

Here at Retrovert we love to cook and we love vintage too. So, I thought I'd combine the two and explore the realm of vintage cooking. I hope to try out some traditional recipes in my modern kitchen and share with you my successes (and failures) along the way. A few weeks ago I blogged about The Modern Housewife's Book and I wanted to chose a recipe from it as my first. A glut of blackcurrants and talk of jam at the first Cambridge City WI meeting inspired me to make this:

Black Currant and Raspberry Jam.

3 lb. black currants.     1 pint raspberry juice.
1 lb. sugar to each pint of juice and pound of fruit.

Put the currants and juice into a preserving pan, and boil for 10 minutes. Add sugar in the above proportions and boil for 20 minutes. Pot and cover in the usual way.

Aunt Kate's Jam and Jellies section is comprehensive - there are 12 recipes for blackcurrant jam alone. I chose to try this one as it sounded most interesting and used the fresh fruits I have in the garden. 

Making the Jam

The book doesn't include a way of making raspberry juice so this is how I did it:

Take a bowl full of fresh raspberries and pick them over. Heat them gently in a saucepan with half a pint of water. Stir and crush them with the back of a wooden spoon. Simmer for five more minutes. Let it cool, then strain the juice. I used a muslin and a jam funnel, a very fine sieve would work too. This made 3/4 of a pint of juice so I topped it up with water to make a pint for the full recipe.

Half way through I had to separate the jam into two large saucepans - this was a bit tricky but I really didn't want it to boil over. Making in batches to start with or using a large preserving pan would be a better idea - all mine are either used for dyeing or are vintage and don't work on our induction hob!

Sealing and Storing

Aunt Kate discusses the 'Best Way to Seal and Store' in detail. Here are the tips I followed: Scald the jars and put them in a warm oven to dry. Pour the hot jam into the jars and then seal with a waxed circle immediately. Aunt Kate suggests filling to within an inch of the top, but I filled them right up to the brim. She also uses parchment tied on with string over the top, but I used lids to save time and effort!

To label my jam I borrowed an idea from fellow Cambridge bloggers. Thanks Crafty Painter and claireabellemakes! I made my washi tape labels from reused and recycled paper - even one of our market stall bags. When I was finished I arranged my jars in a nice row as Aunt Kate suggests!

The Verdict

I have eaten this jam every day since I made it, so it must be good! The flavours work really well together - the tartness of blackcurrant combined with the sweetness of raspberry. Working from a vintage recipe added to my enjoyment of the experience and I am looking forward to my next cooking experiment.

I'd love to know what you thought of my first recipe post! Any suggestions welcome...

This week we celebrated my niece's first birthday. So, of course, my sister and I couldn't resist making her a fancy cake. We based our design on this Pink Ombre Swirl Cake by Glorious Treats - super girly and super sweet. For the inside we went for Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake Recipe - light but deliciously chocolatey.

Here is our cake in all its frosted glory. We actually used a piping bag, but I just had to take a picture of it next to our vintage Tala Icing Set.

The icing was delicious - butter, icing sugar and a dash of double cream. The sort you have to keep 'testing'... We used red food colouring, but ended up with a retro peaches and cream look. The ombre effect was simple but striking and the chocolate cake was as good as always.

We had some icing left so we made cupcakes too. My stash of vintage cake stands came in particularly handy - I chose this orange floral three tier stand to match the colour of the cakes.

Piping icing is definitely addictive (and so is eating the results!). I'd love some suggestions of more icing experiments to try...

I think we'll be eating cake all week! Hope everyone has had a lovely long  weekend too.