Here is my present to you this Saturday morning: a virtual apple puff, calorie free and cholesterol free, from the Victoria Bakery in Barnet.
First fold back the paper bag: you need it to hold the apple puff in case you lose any delicious bits!
You bite the nearest corner, through a layer of crunchy melted granulated sugar, some still granulated and grating beneath your teeth, some melted into a sheeny hard crust on top of the pastry; next is compressed edge-pastry, the puff pastry clenched tightly to hold in the filling. There is the merest tang of apple, for this is just the edge, and the doughy base is almost unpleasant, but not quite.
Next mouthful, you bite through cloudy moist layers of pastry just under the crunch, and you hit the apple big time: sour, sweet, cold, juicy, deliciously slimy; your teeth come to a halt on a layer of pastry solid with apple juice and syrup at the base of the apple puff.
More,more, more... the proportion of apple to pastry swings in favour of apple at the centre, and back pastrywards as you approach the final corner.
At the end, you have to decide: do you want to end on a note of appley pastry, or a note of pastryey apple? Personally, I savour a final corner of just puff pastry with s tiny hint of apple syrup glueing it together.
Or rather, I used to.
Every time I pass the baker's shop, I long for my former cholesterol-rich diet as I head back home for a bowl of lentil soup!
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