Butterscotch Apple Meringue

We’ve had a sort out in the house & loft recently and I came across a pile of Gavin’s Nans recipes which we had found stashed in the back of a cookery book.

I try and be organised with recipes but have them on scraps of paper, envelopes, magazine edges well anything that I can write on! I love the idea that someone would find one of these years later and have a go at cooking it!

I had a look through and decided to cook something that I had hopefully all the ingredients in for.

Butterscotch apple meringues fitted the bill and sounded nice too. This was a handwritten recipe so didn’t come with any photos to give me an idea of what the end result should look like, which is not usually how I work!

Butterscotch Apple Meringues

Ingredients (serves 4-6 people)

450g cooking apples, peeled, cored & chopped

40g cornflour

450ml milk

1 tbsp golden syrup

50g soft brown sugar

25g butter

2 tbsp single cream

2 size 3 eggs (separated)

100g caster sugar

Preheat oven to 150C (fan 130C) GM2

Cook the apples in a little water until just tender. drain off the liquid.

Blend the cornflour with a little of the milk in a bowl. Heat the remaining milk in a saucepan with the syrup, brown sugar & butter until boiling.

Pour this mixture onto the cornflour stirring, then return to the saucepan bring to the boil stirring continuously, simmer for 3-4 minutes.

Remove from the heat and stir in the cream and egg yolks. Reheat with out boiling. Gently fold in the apple. Pour into an oven proof serving dish.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff add half the sugar whisk again then add remaining sugar and whisk until just combined. Pipe over the apple mixture.

Bake until meringue is golden & crisp. About 25 minutes. Serve hot or cold. We had it hot which was lovely, not sure the texture lends itself to cold as it’s rather custard like (I really don’t like cold custard).

Not the prettiest thing I’ve ever made but very tasty. Best bit is it’s a very personal thing written by someone in our family who liked the recipe enough to jot it down. It just so happened to be made on the day that would have been Gramps’ 97th birthday.