Apple Crumble, Awful lot of food and Alpha

I had a very busy day yesterday. I have learnt that when I am having a very busy day and I have volunteered to bring a pudding, there is one very simple answer - apple crumble.

Ingredients:

4 large or 6 smallish bramley cooking apples
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Dash of nutmeg
75 grams butter / margarine / clover / whatever you have in the fridge
100 grams flour
75 grams brown sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Peel and chop the apples (worst bit) and put them in a large pan with the 4 tablespoons brown sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg. Add a splash of hot water from the kettle. Bring to the boil and them simmer until the apples soften. This will take about 1o minutes. You don't want puree so be careful not to leave too long. This can be left to cool / done ahead and frozen at this stage.

Put the remaining ingredients in the magi mix. Whizz for a few seconds. Pour the apple mixture into bottom of dish, cover with crumble and bake for about 35 minutes.

Serve with shop bought custard, ice cream or whipped cream. The whipped cream was something of a disaster for me yesterday - see below.

This was the most straightforward bit of my cooking efforts yesterday. I was cooking for the new Alpha course that we are running at church. The menu was straightforward - chili and rice and all the trimmings and puddings. Other happy volunteers were bringing bowls of chili - and I just had to help throw it all together, for up to 100 people. Ahem. These are the things I learnt:

1. Popping to Sainsburys to get the trimmings when factoring up the volume to this many people does not just take about half an hour as I thought it would. And I kid you not my trolley was overflowing. I seriously looked like something out of supermarket sweep. Apologies to anyone else in Richmond Sainsburys yesterday who wanted to buy sour cream, guacamole or nachos. I cleared them out. And also put a very large dent in the salads, boil in the bag rice and orange juice. Oh and I also bought all the ready grated cheddar (yes about 20 bags of the stuff) I wasn't expecting this to draw quite as much attention to myself - lots of well meaning bods decided to comment on my huge quantities of food I was buying. The check out boy even said he wanted to come and help eat it all
2. Bowls. You need a LOT of bowls for this amount of food
3. Whipping cream is a completely unnecessary extra. It was my bright idea to offer a bowl of whipped cream with the puddings. So, in my 45 minute "rest slot" of the afternoon I thought I would take home the cream to whip it up. I had a lot to carry so put the cream in the same bag as the tablecloths that I had spent most of the previous afternoon helping to make, and in between my car and my front door - the cream burst in the bag, all over the tablecloths. So, bear in mind it is now approx 5.15pm and the event starts at 7.30pm. And I have just managed to burst cream all over Burgundy tablecloths. Genius.
4. A scrubbing brush and hairdryer can save the day. Tablecloths spread out over the floor, hot water and lots of scrubbing. Now they are slightly patchy and soaking wet. Drape them over the banisters and blast with the hairdryer. This done whilst getting changed and applying make-up in an attempt to try and look vaguely pretty later on, and not someone who had just done 12 rounds (yes 12) with the tablecloths and hairdryer after a couple of hours in Sainsburys.
5. Boil in the bag rice serves more that you think. I followed guidance - one bag per person - we had more rice than you can possibly imagine. I will never forget fishing bags and bags of the stuff out of huge pans to snip them and wondering where we going to put it all. We had an embarrassing amount left. Allegra would not have been happy (see previous post on Economy Gastronomy) I was not happy. I hate wasting food, I just found it so hard to judge the amount we would need.
6. Estimating the amount of food you need is really hard. Live and learn I say, better too much than too little.

This list is by no means a moan. Honestly. I loved being part of last night. The room looked great, and the the tablecloths did too. Everyone ate well, and we had loads of seconds and the selection of puddings was fantastic. The live music, the talk, the atmosphere (and hopefully the food!) made for lots of smiles and laughter. And the hope is that new people who came along would have had a really good evening, and felt really welcome like I did last year, and will want to come again and find out more. That is so long as they don't start demanding whipped cream with their pud. There are boundaries to my capacity to hold it all together. That one pushed me to the limit.