December 23, 2017

Almost Yule Eve now! Hopefully many of us are ready with the preparations and have their larders filled with food for the upcoming holidays. But if you suddenly realize that you are out of the sweet stuff and have no energy for baking, you could try out this lazy Yule apple recipe that builds on the essential ingredients of any tasty food: sugar, butter and crispiness!

Pycella's lazy Yule apples
6 - 9 apples
100 g butter
100 g sugar
100 g almond flakes
2 tablespoons wheat flour
2 tablespoons milk
(cinnamon etc.)

Peel the apples (I used a sweet variety), remove the seeds and cut the apples into wedges. Place them into a buttered tray and prebake for 10-15 minutes at 200°C. Combine butter, sugar, almond flakes, flour and milk in a pot and heat it until the butter has melted, mix it well. You can add some Yule seasoning to the mixture (cinnamon should work well). When the apples have been prebaked, spread the mixture over them and bake for another 15 minutes (or until the topping looks nicely brown) at 220°C.

Tip: if you don't have enough almond flakes, like I did, you can use pine nuts too, or something similar.

As an extra, I am adding a new song here that I wrote for the Badgers. I sang it at the Green Dragon Yule party yesterday. You can hum it to the song "Fairytale of New Pork".

Purple Snowbeast's Yule Eve

It’s Yule eve in the woods
Where the snowbeasts roam
In their lair they sleep
In caves so dark and deep
But one small beast stays up
She wants to go straight out
A purple snowbeast
Who just wants to have fun

When others snore quite loud
The beast sneaks swiftly out
She sniffs the cold air
Snow falls on her hair
And then she hears the sounds
Someone toots loud
She hurries to join
the party in good time

The Badgers are playing their favourite songs
All foxes and birdies are humming along
Creatures of woods having fun in all peace
They just concentrate on their musical needs
“Dear snowbeast, come forward, join our grand band”
“Here are some instruments, take one in your hands”
So she grabs the bagpipes without second thoughts
Her snowbeast lungs can toot them all night long

And together they played and sang until the break of dawn
It was the best Yule eve that snowbeast ever saw

The trees were swaying, their hearts were melting
The songs warmed up the cold winter night
The stars were smiling, blistfully shining
And bears they all grumbled, asleep in their pens

And together they played and sang until the break of dawn
It was the best Yule eve that snowbeast ever saw

And when came the morn
The snowbeast hurried home
But she was filled with joy:
She’d found a new toy
It was the bagpipes she clung to her arms
And from that day onwards
She tooted bagpipe songs

Every day she played all her favourite songs
It was the best Yule gift she ever got