Caramelised-Apple Croissant

This recipe (which doesn't actually involve much cooking i.e. a teenage boy could make it) comes from Nigel Slater, who possesses the wonderful talent of knowing which foodstuffs go perfectly together. It's a dessert-sandwich/midnight snack which is both flaky and tender; sugary hot and creamy cold. It is also inevitably messy, and I would advise tackling the consumption of this dish with your fingers only in the company of good friends, who won't judge.

You begin by melting a large knob of butter (around 50g) in a frying pan whilst thickly slicing a couple of apples (cooking- or eating-). Fry the apple slices in the butter for 5-10 minutes until nicely golden before adding to the pan 50g soft brown sugar. Turn the heat up to let the sugar bubble (thus begin the caramelising process) and heat two croissants in the oven/under the grill. Get a tub of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer to soften. Continue cooking the apples for 5-10 minutes until soft (not mushy) and in a nice, sticky caramel. Slice each warm croissant in half and place on a plate. Spoon the apples into the middle along with a scoop of ice cream in each; finish by dribbling the remaining caramel over it all.

Bikinis Bite the Dust

The weather in England grows increasingly autumnal; I hear cries of 'sod the diet!' as the opportunity for donning a bikini dims and we all pull on wooly jumpers to shield us from the howling wind. I was at a friend's house on Wednesday evening to a) have dinner and b) forage around in his neighbour's vegetable patch (with the owner's consent, of course). Having ventured out into heavy rain and picked a generous crop of tomatoes and root vegetables, we were in need of something warm and sweet to take our minds off our soggy feet. I prepared this easy-peasy chocolate & peanut-butter sauce and spooned it over vanilla ice-cream, creating a fussiless comfort dessert. The sauce is adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe; I have reduced the ingredients list to just four items, three of which may well exist in your household anyday.

Ingredients:
180g dark chocolate
2 tbsp. golden syrup
2 tbsp. peanut butter (quantity can be varied, according to your taste)
Milk

Method:
1. Melt the chocolate and peanut butter in a bain-marie, cooking gently and without the bottom of the bowl touching the water beneath it.
2. Stir in the golden syrup, reserving some if the mixture gets too thick to stir comfortably.
3. Stir in splashes of milk, little be little, until a smooth, glossy sauce is achieved that dribbles in thick ribbons off the spoon.

Substitute unsalted butter for the peanut-butter if you'd like a simpler, less sickly sauce. The end result will always be calorific but, with swimsuits back in the drawer, there's now much less pressure to have such a defined figure.