For our colourful November episode, we celebrate winter's brightest flowers, chrysanthemums. We share a recipe for bonfire toffee apples, explore nature's November fireworks - the Leonids meteor shower - and spend time with the remarkable Atlantic salmon, who will be swimming upriver this month.
'As the Season Turns' is a podcast created by Ffern and presented by the nature writer and author of the Seasonal Almanac Lia Leendertz. Each episode, released on the first of every month, is a guide to what to look out for in the month ahead - from the sky above to the land below.
*RECIPE*
Bonfire toffee apples
Bonfire toffee is the dark toffee rich in black treacle, associated with Bonfire Night and particularly loved in the North of England. It is so hard that it has to be smashed into pieces when made in a tray, but it is slightly easier to eat wrapped around apples on sticks. Only partake if you are confident of your fillings! Any eating apples will work, but those with a sharp or very distinctive flavour will be particularly good. You will need a sugar thermometer.
Makes 8 toffee apples
Ingredients
8 apples
8 sticks (apple tree prunings look great)
Sunflower oil
125ml hot water
450g muscovado sugar
115g black treacle
115g golden syrup
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
Method
Put the apples into a large bowl, pour a kettle of boiled water over them, and leave for a few minutes to remove the waxy coating that would prevent the toffee from sticking. Pour away the water and pat the apples dry, then remove their stalks and push a stick into each. Put parchment paper on a flat baking tray with baking parchment, and rub it all over with oil. Line a small baking tray with baking parchment, and oil that well, too, ready for any excess toffee.
Gently heat the water and the sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, without stirring (you can swish the pan a little if you need to) until the sugar has dissolved. Oil a bowl and measure the black treacle and golden syrup into it, then pour that into the sugar and water mixture. Add the cream of tartar, and swish again to lightly mix everything. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to the boil. Continue boiling until it reaches 140 C on the sugar thermometer, sometimes labelled ‘soft crack’ (this may take some time but don’t leave the toffee unattended).
As soon as it reaches that point, remove it from the heat and work quickly to roll your apples in the toffee, letting the excess drip off (you want as thin a coating as possible) and then placing them ‘stick up’ on the oiled parchment. Pour any excess onto the small lined baking tray. Leave to cool completely. The toffee in the small baking tray will have to be smashed into shards with a hammer, in the traditional manner.