Apple Dumplings
What is it about food and nostalgia? What makes us so invested in the memory of certain tastes and textures? Proust knew, when he wrote of his famous madeleine, the scent of which transported him straight back to his childhood. I, for better or worse, don’t hold many food memories from my childhood, not ones that cause me to swoon when I encounter a certain aroma anyway. That’s not to say I wasn’t fed well; I was, it’s just that nothing especially stands out.
I would not be the cook I am today though without the foundations laid down by my mother in my early years. Recipe books weren’t often used, though they were referred to, which made cooking a little mysterious to me at first. For many years, I didn’t feel confident tackling a fruitcake as I’d only seen Mum make them by feel. When I finally did try, I realised I did know all the principles, I had picked them up simply through observation. In the end, Mum’s intuitive cooking was a gift, as it has allowed me to develop confidence in the kitchen and find pleasure in preparing food.
Apart from fruitcake though, I can’t really think of any other recipe or dish that I recreate from my past. This is unlike my mother-in-law, who still makes and holds dear her own mother’s apple dumplings. My husband has not inherited an interest in cooking, so I feel a responsibility to honour the memory of this dish and preserve it for my own children. Food connects us directly to our forebears. When we eat something that they once ate, we experience a very visceral connection to the past, and to a long line of ancestry that goes beyond the mere familial. When I first tasted the dumplings, I immediately understood why they are a perennial family favourite. Puff pastry parcels of diced apple are baked in a rich syrup of butter, golden syrup, and water. The tops of the dumpling stay above the liquid, and they become a crisp foil to the gloriously sodden, toffeed bottoms. Spices can be added but my mother-in-law prefers to keep them plain, perhaps to please everyone’s taste, as they are usually made en masse for family celebrations like birthdays or at Christmas time.
Coming from a line of Australian cooks with English and Eastern-European heritage, as my mother-in-law does, I wondered about this dish. I had never come across it. I did stumble on a Facebook recipe video that closely resembles my husband’s family version, based on a recipe from The CWA Book of Cookery and Household Hints published in 1936. In this, uncooked peeled and quartered apples - not precooked diced apples - are wrapped in puff pastry before being baked in the syrup. I have now sourced my own copy of the book and it adheres closely to the video I saw, the only difference being that the original recipe calls for shortcrust pastry.
I became intrigued by the history of the dish. An online search of Australian recipe sites revealed a number of interpretations, the most common being some variation on a scone-like dough, either mixed with grated apple or moulded around apple pieces and then baked in a golden-syrup sauce. In other recipes, the plain dough is baked on top of sliced apples mixed with brown sugar, butter and sometimes golden syrup, in the style of a cobbler. In only one place did I find a recipe that called for a shortcrust-like pastry, for the Apple and Honey dumplings on The Australian Jewish News website. It was the same story when I referred to my own go-to Margaret Fulton and Stephanie Alexander cookbooks on my shelf. From the UK and US, I did find recipes that called for pastry to be wrapped around apples (usually halved or quartered), with the apple centres filled with a spiced brown sugar and butter mixture or marmalade before being encased. Again though, the predominant pastry of choice was short, not puff. Given how fiddly puff pastry is to prepare at home, and that the pre-prepared commercial item is only a recent phenomenon, it is little wonder that most recipes favour the easy-to-make shortcrust. Was the use of puff pastry a Ferguson family twist?
I never found any recipes that used canned pie apple or called for the apples to be pre-cooked, but I can appreciate this shortcut when a large batch of dumplings are to be made. It all has me pondering the ways in which recipes move through time, among family members, and between cultures. Versions of apple dumplings appear across Europe, like the Dutch Appelbollen, the German Apfelknodel, and the rombosse de Mariembourg of Belgium.
Where puff pastry and pie apple entered the picture, I can’t say but what is certain is that the addition of golden syrup connects these dumplings unequivocally to Britain. Golden syrup was developed in England in the early 1880s (the exact year is debated) by a Scotsman, Abram Lyle and Englishman Charles Eastick, at Lyle’s Plaistow Wharf Sugar Refinery in East London. It was Lyle who first saw the potential of this viscous syrup – a byproduct of sugar refining – as a marketable product. However, it was Eastick who developed a recipe for it and produced it commercially. Golden syrup would go on to become a much-loved ingredient in English cuisine, indispensable to so many quintessential English desserts we know today, as well as to Australia’s ANZAC biscuits.
The apple dumpling, in its various iterations, seems then fairly established in Australia’s culinary repertoire, as it certainly is in the United States (they have a National Apple Dumping Day on the 17th September) and in many countries across Europe. As a testament to its enduring appeal, I would like to share a wonderful folktale I came across in my research. It is called The Apple Dumpling Story, and it’s about a woman who wished for an apple dumpling for her supper. Alas, she has no apples, but plenty of plums, so she goes in search of someone to barter with, to exchange her plums for apples. Along the way she meets various people in need, and the old woman happily gives her goods in exchange for something they can offer in return, even if they are not the apples she desires. It is a wonderful parable of how even on our journey to fulfil our own ambitions, we can still be kind to those we meet along the way. Eventually she gets her apples, but she may not have got there at all had she only been singularly focussed on her goal and not noticed those around her. You can read the tale here and check out my version of the recipe on this page if you would like to make them for yourself.
Apple Dumplings in Toffee Syrup
This is my interpretation of both the recipe I was given by my mother-in-law and the traditional recipe from the original 1936 Country Women’s Association Cookbook. Instead of canned pie apple, I use fresh and let them cook inside the pastry. I also like the addition of some spice, but of course this is optional. My mother-in-law adds sugar to the syrup, but it is not in the original recipe and I don’t think it needs it. The use of puff pastry is a departure from the CWA recipe, but it is delicious. You could make your own rough puff, but for ease, the ready rolled products are more than fine. Here I have used Carême, which is conveniently the right size for cutting out six even squares. If using Pampas,* which comes in squares of roughly 26 x 26cm, you will need one and a half sheets. Allow the pastry to mostly defrost prior to using. As with all old recipes, the CWA version includes minimal measurements, and no cooking times or precise temperatures. This is my attempt to update the recipe for cooks of all experience levels. A note on the apples: Pink Lady apples have a nice balance of tartness and sweetness, so if using another variety, aim for something similar. Avoid apples that will collapse when cooking, such as Granny Smiths. The ones I used were fairly large, use three if yours are smaller.
* I can only refer to Australian brands, if you are elsewhere, use the measurements as a guide when choosing your own pastry brand.
INGREDIENTS
200g (1/2 cup) golden syrup
115g butter
1 cup boiling water
Ready rolled puff pastry, defrosted, roughly 27cm x 36cm to make six 9cm x 9cm squares
2-3 Pink Lady apples, peeled and cut into large dice
2T caster sugar
1/2 t ground cinnamon
pinch each of ground nutmeg and cloves
METHOD
Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF).
Combine golden syrup, butter and boiling water in a pan and place over a moderate heat to melt.
Place diced apples, sugar and spices in a bowl and toss to combine.
Place pastry on a clean board or piece of baking paper and cut into six squares.
Divide apples evenly between each square. Using a pastry brush or your finger, moisten the edges of one square and gently gather and press the four corners together. Bring up the sides of the pastry and press and twist the top until you have a fully enclosed dumpling (see video below).
Place each dumpling as you go into a baking dish. Ladle over the hot syrup, and place into the preheated oven. Bake for 1 hour or until the dumplings are puffed and golden.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.
