Apples - lovely sweet windfalls and small tart apples from trees that grace backyards and are rarely pruned, mostly forgotten until their fruit drops to the ground. Boxes and crates of rosy eating apples, piled in mountains at the farmers market on saturdays. It’s the perfect time to be buying and eating apples, now when they are at their crisp and juicy best. I never tire of eating apples in all their shapes and sizes.

I’ve had a couple of large boxes of apples given to me so I’ve been keeping my eyes open for things that use apples. Apples pair well with so many things, cinnamon, brown sugar, quince, pears, ginger, blackberries and plums.

I took a stack of cook books out of the library and was thumbing through the copy of Every Day by Bill Granger when I saw this loaf. It looked like just the thing to make over an autumn weekend. I had to adapt it somewhat for the ingredients I had on hand, but I was more than happy with the result. He suggests it toasted, and I can see how this would toast well. Today we had it still slightly warm from the oven as part of a lunch to meet Ryan’s gorgeous new girlfriend.

A simple loaf to make with homey flavours of cinnamon and honey as a background to the fruit, there is oatmeal in the loaf - which honestly you would never know was there, except that it adds a moistness to it. I love oatmeal in baked goods. This is fast to make and smells amazing when it cooks.

Walnut, Cherry & Apple Quickbread

• 1/2 cup of rolled oats
• 300 mls/10 1/2 fl oz milk
• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 tspn baking powder
• 1/4 cup of dried or glace cherries chopped
• 1 large apple peeled and finely diced
• 1/2 cup of sultanas
• 1/3 cup of soft brown sugar (plus extra for the top)
• 1 tspn cinnamon (plus extra for the top)
• 3 Tbspns honey
• 1 egg
• 3 Tblspns of roughly chopped walnuts plus extra 2 Tblspns for the top.

Place the oats in a bowl with the milk, leave to soak while you prepare the other ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and line a 1 kg (2 lbs) loaf tin with baking paper

Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a bowl and whisk together to mix.

Add into the bowl with the oats - the cherries, walnuts, honey, brown sugar, apple, sultanas and egg whisk together to mix well and then add to the dry ingredients.

Stir together well to form quite a wet mix and pour into the loaf tin.

Sprinkle the remaining walnuts over the top and a little brown sugar and cinnamon.

Bake the loaf for 45-50 minutes until golden brown on top and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin before removing carefully to finish cooling on a wire rack.

This loaf can be toasted and served with ricotta or yoghurt and honey, or sliced and spread with butter.

When you slice into the loaf you are greeted with the warm scent of cinnamon, the top of the loaf is slightly crunchy and caramelised.

Although it’s autumn here I can imagine this loaf being tucked into a basket for a picnic, it would transport well I think.

While those of you in the northern hemisphere are watching blossoms on trees and daffodils poke their heads out of the ground, here in the southern hemisphere the earth is entering it’s sleep.

Leaves are falling from trees

Flowers changing from vibrant shades to greens and browns.

The view out my window in the morning shrouded in mist.

Kererū coming close to the house, close enough to touch - they’re looking for the berries on the native trees close to our house.

Slippers, knitting, pinecones, hot chocolate, fruit toast, vanilla oatmeal, rustling leaves and frosty mornings - I love this time of year. There are so many people that love summer, the colder seasons - autumn and winter are the ones I wait for.

Time to knit, time to bake and fill the house with delicious kitchen scents.

My mother found this recipe for Almond Shortbread when we were searching for the cherry butter cookie recipe. The instructions were non existent and the handwriting was difficult to read, some of the recipe quantities we had to guess. That sounded like a challenge I wanted to take on. I decided to make it. Since I associate glace cherries with my Grandmother I opted to make this a Cherry and Almond Shortbread.

I did have a small incident with this shortbread. After I mixed the dough it looked a little on the dry side. After chilling for an hour, it was still a little crumbly, so I then had to backtrack and rub in a little more butter and re-chill. This shortbread has had a little more handling than it should. But despite that, it’s not too bad. Considering the excess handling this had it’s hard to know what it would be like without it. So I will try this recipe again with the increased butter quantities before I give a definitive verdict on it.

Cherry and Almond Shortbread

• 150 grams of butter
• 60 grams caster sugar
• 250 grams flour
• 50 grams of ground almonds
• 1 tspn almond essence
• 1/4 of a cup of glace cherries finely chopped.
• pinch of salt
• 1 tspn baking powder

Preheat the oven to 150C/300F and line two baking trays with parchment

Sift the dry ingredients in a bowl and add in the chilled butter cut into cubes.

Rub the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers until the dough looks like fine crumbs and will hold together if squeezed. Sprinkle over the almond essence and finely chopped cherries and gently mix through with your fingers.

Bring the dough together into a log and place the dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.

Cut into rounds or rectangles about 1 cm thick. I used a shortbread mould for mine. You can roll it out on a floured work surface and cut it with a cookie cutter or a knife, if you want rounds slice it straight from the log. Cook for roughly 30 minutes in the centre of the oven. The shortbread should retain it’s light colour. If you see it starting to darken remove from the oven.

I dusted off my Grandmothers vintage postcard album this morning, and was enjoying my memories of her in her kitchen with her blue and white spotted apron, crystal beads or pearls, and always wearing a neat house dress. She used to make little butter and cherry cookies and home made icecream. My mother tells me that Grandma also made either a jar of preserves or jam for every day of the year.

She did not really like children in her kitchen though, and we were often hustled out. It did not stop me from peering through the door and making excuses to just walk through the kitchen to see what she was doing.

She was a wonderful cook. Every Sunday we would be served vegetable soup made from scratch as a precursor to the inevitable roast. “that was a jelly this morning” she’d say.. and I would nod my head knowingly, having no idea what she was talking about. I also remember her talking about getting a nice beef bone from the butcher - I always wondered what she did with it, since she never had a dog. Of course she was talking about making beef stock from scratch, but as a small child it was most confusing.

Today I wanted to share a recipe from my grandmother’s era. I always remember her making little shortbread cookies with almonds and cherries on the top. I had to phone my mother to see if she had the recipe, she found it in a handwritten recipe book of Grandmas that she’d inherited.

She always kept these little shortbread cookies with cherries and almonds on the top in the red tins with a Chinese pattern on them. They were just at child height. We used to sneak into the kitchen and wait until Grandma was looking the other way and grab a couple and run. Now that I think about it, there is no way that she did not hear us, she must have just chosen to keep looking the other way while we struggled with the tin lid.

We had a bit of a struggle to decipher Grandma’s handwriting.

I still have the tin that she used to keep the cookies in. It was quite a strange feeling to be making these cookies it felt like I was recreating my childhood pushing the little cherries on to the cookies and tucking them into the same tin.

Grandma’s Cherry Butter Cookies

• 6oz/170 grams of flour
• 5oz/150 grams of butter
• 2oz/50 grams icing sugar/powdered sugar
• 1/2 tspn vanilla
• 1/2 tspn baking powder

Beat together the icing sugar and softened butter

Add the vanilla

Add the flour and baking powder and mix, it will make a soft dough. Roll into balls and flatten slightly, press half a glace cherry into the top of each cookie.

Bake for roughly 10-12 minutes at 180C/350F

These are a very plain little shortbread type cookie, not overly sweet and nice with a cup of tea.

Here they are, Grandma’s cookies in her cookie tin.