And Is There Honey Still for Tea?

The tidying of the pantry continues. I thought I had my supplies of honey down to six jars. And then my daughter, who had been flatting and moved home, did some unpacking, and produced another jar of honey. Next, I emptied a box or two of herbal tea, and started to poke around the remaining umpty-eleven boxes of various sorts of tea, and there at the back of the shelf I found a small wooden crate containing three more jars of honey! (I think many of these have been bought on holiday, visiting road side stalls and the like).

So yes, there is honey still for tea in this household. (For those who don't know it, that's a reference to a poem by Rupert Brooke, a poet who died in World War 1).

I have been permitting myself to indulge in honey on toast for breakfast - probably somewhat less healthy than my usual cereal, although at least the toast is wholemeal.

I also used some making this dessert, from a recipe I clipped from a magazine more than forty years ago - it was a teenage magazine called "Petticoat", published at a time when it was thought teenaged girls, who may have left home, actually wanted to read about cooking, decorating tips etc and not just gossip about "celebrities"

This recipe predates the metric system - so, 1 lb is about 450 grams, 4 oz about 125 grams etc - teaspoons and tablespoons should be about the same, 5 ml for a teaspoon and 15 ml for a tablespoon, though I believe in Australia a tablespoon is 20 ml. Don't worry about it, it's not too critical to be exact.

Date and Apple Torte
1 lb peeled,cored cooking apples
4 oz stoned dates
2 oz shelled walnuts (I always leave these out)
1 egg
4 oz Barbados sugar - whatever that is, just use whatever brown sugar you can find
4 oz wholewheat flour
2 heaped teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
half a teaspoon salt
1 oz butter, melted
1 tablespoon clear honey

Dice the apples, chop dates and walnuts. Beat the egg. Mix everything together until the flour is absorbed. Turn into a greased baking tin about 8 inches square and two inches deep (about 20 cm square and 5 cm deep)

Bake it at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 200 degrees Celsius, although actually I think I baked it at my standard 180 degrees along with the roast meat, and it came out fine), until it is firm and brown and the apples are soft, about 50 minutes.

This is good hot or cold with cream or ice cream - and I tell myself it is healthy with all that brown sugar and wholemeal flour.

It looks as if I'll have to make it quite a few more times to make a dent in the remaining ten jars of honey!