Love food, hate waste

Weekends are great, especially lazy ones.Weekends are for lie-ins, breakfast in bed,  trips to the cinema (we went to see Sherlock Holmes...ace) and afternoons in the pub. But the one thing I don't like about weekends is housework. Like a lot of people I work Monday to Friday, 8am (or 9am) - 5pm (or 4pm). I train at Kung Fu Monday nights 7-9pm, and I try and go to the gym, for a swim or to a Pilates class on 3 other evenings during the week . I'm lucky if I'm home before 7.30pm most days. So after dinner has been cooked and eaten there's not much of the evenings left to do anything productive, even if I had the energy to do something, which I usually don't. Therefore housework tends to be a weekend job.

As I was cleaning and tidying the kitchen I noticed there were a few wrinkly and squashed apples in the bottom of the fruit bowl, forgotten about over Christmas when cake, chocolate and mince pies were more appealing. They were too wrinkly and soft to eat, but as I don't like wasting food I didn't want to just throw them out. so the only logical thing to do was to cook with them.

There weren't enough apples for a cake or a pie so I decided to make some cookies. I perused my vast collection of cookbooks but couldn't find a recipe for apple cookies. Cakes, scones, pies, crumbles and tarts...yes. Cookies...no. I did, however, come across a recipe for raisin, oat and cinnamon cookies. Aha, thought I. I'll just substitute the raisins for apples and all will be fine...but no, I didn't have enough butter for said recipe and halving it would have still left me with a wrinkly apple or two. So I decided to experiment a little. With a mixture of bits from this recipe and bits from an 'old faithful' cookie recipe I cooked up my own oaty, apple and cinnamon cookies. Which, I have to say, have turned out very nice indeed. Maybe a little soft in the middle, I put that down to the moisture in the apples, but they taste great. And they'll definitely be eaten long before they're past their best, so no waste here!


Oaty Apple and Cinnamon Cookies


Ingredients (makes approx. 16 cookies)
150g/6oz butter, softened
100g/4oz light muscovado sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
150g/6oz self raising flour
150g/6oz porridge oats
1 tsp ground cinnamon
150g/6oz - 200g/8oz apple, peeled, cored and diced (not too small, not too big)

Method
1.Preheat oven to 160C. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment/greaseproof paper.
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Then beat in the syrup. (I find my stand mixer or an electric hand held mixer best for this job.)
3. Mix in the flour and half of the oats, adding it in a few stages, until combined. Then mix in the chopped apple and the last of the oats. At this stage you may need to get your hands in to bring it all together.
4. Divide the mixture into 16 balls. Place them on the baking sheets, not too close together as they will spread when cooking, and press down lightly on each to flatten a little.
5. Bake for 15 minutes until golden. Leave to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes or so before transferring to a wire rack to finish off.

Whilst they are cooling, stick the kettle on and make yourself a cuppa. And enjoy with a freshly baked cookie.

The rest of the housework can wait :-)