An apple pie a day...

Our apple tree had gone berserk. I am rapidly running out of freezer space and my neighbours are going to start hiding from me if I offer them any more boxes of apples.

 At least the butterflies are loving them.

Forget buddleias. If you want butterflies in your garden, you can't beat piles of rotting apples on the ground. They are all rolling around drunk here.

I've done apple pies, crumbles, cakes, turnovers, betties. I've added blackberries, sultanas, cinnamon, even chocolate. I was all set to try a tarte tatin, then realised I have the wrong sort of apples. You need eaters apparently and mine are cookers. I may give it a bash anyway.

I think my favourite apple pudding has got to be chocolate apple Betty. It's adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe in his book Real Food. It is so quick to make especially if you cheat and buy the breadcrumbs.

Peel and roughly chop five or six large apples and soften them in a pan with a generous slab of butter and a couple of tablespoons of water. Add some sugar. I like my apples fairly tart but you may have a sweet tooth, so go for it. The topping is a mixture of 125g breadcrumbs, 100g soft brown sugar and 100g of chocolate broken in to pieces. Nigel uses dark, I prefer it with milk.

Melt 75g of butter in a pan and stir in 3 tablespoons of golden syrup, then pour over your breadcrumb mixture. Cook for about 35 minutes at 190°C.

It's lovely with cream, ice cream or custard.

Okay only another couple of tonnes of apples to plough through.