Seasonal Autumn Baking with Apples and Pears

Orchard Fruit at Its Best

By late September, British apples and pears are at their peak — crisp, perfumed and cheap enough to buy by the bag. This is the moment to bake with them, because fruit that has spent months in cold storage simply doesn't carry the same acidity and aroma. Autumn baking is less about technical showpieces and more about warmth: soft fruit collapsing into sponge, buttery crumble, and pastry that fills the kitchen with the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar. The recipes below are forgiving, use equipment you already own, and reward you for buying whatever the greengrocer happens to have in a box by the door.

Choosing and Preparing Apples and Pears

The single biggest improvement you can make to an autumn bake is matching the fruit to the job. Cookers and eaters behave very differently in the oven.

• Bramley collapses to a fluffy, tangy purée. Perfect for crumble, pie filling and sauce, but it will turn a cake mixture wet if you don't toss it in a little flour first.
• Cox, Egremont Russet and Braeburn hold their shape and bring a sharper, wine-like flavour. Good for tarte tatin, open tarts and chunky cakes where you want visible pieces.
• Conference and Williams pears are firm enough to poach and slice. Comice is juicier and better eaten raw, though it makes a lovely, delicate sorbet or a soft pear and almond cake.

Slightly under-ripe fruit is your friend. Over-ripe pears turn to mush and release so much liquid that pastry goes soggy — if yours are very soft, roast them first with a spoonful of sugar and a knob of butter to drive off moisture. Peel apples only if the skin is tough; the peel adds colour, pectin and a pleasant chew. Core them properly, and if you're making jam later, keep the cores and skins — simmered in water, they make a free pectin stock that sets a batch beautifully.

Building a Warming Spice Palette

Autumn spices work best when layered rather than dumped in. Cinnamon is the backbone, but it flattens into a single note if it's alone. For a 20cm cake, a reliable base is 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground mixed spice and ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg. Add a pinch of ground cloves if you like a slightly medicinal edge, or ½ teaspoon ground ginger and a few crushed cardamom pods when pears are involved.

Two practical points. First, ground spices lose their oils within about six months, so smell yours before you bake — if you can't detect anything, neither will your cake. Second, spices are fat-soluble, so whisk them into the butter or oil rather than stirring them into the flour at the end. A teaspoon of vanilla extract or the finely grated zest of an orange lifts apple and pear flavours without anyone quite identifying why.

Cakes and Loaves for Grey Afternoons

A good apple cake should be moist but not pudding-like. Cream 200g softened butter with 200g light muscovado sugar until pale, then beat in 3 large eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of the flour if it threatens to curdle. Fold through 250g self-raising flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and your spices, then stir in 300–350g diced apple tossed in a tablespoon of flour. Bake in a lined 20cm tin at 180°C (160°C fan, gas 4) for 50–60 minutes, covering loosely with foil after 40 minutes. A skewer should come out with a few moist crumbs, not wet batter.

For a pear version, swap half the apple for diced pear and add the ginger. A handful of chopped hazelnuts or walnuts on top gives texture and tells everyone in the house that something good is happening in the oven. These cakes improve overnight and keep for four days in a tin.

Crumbles, Pies and Tarts

The classic crumble ratio is easy to remember: 2 parts plain flour to 1 part cold butter to 1 part sugar, by weight. So 200g flour, 100g diced butter and 100g demerara. Rub the butter in lightly — you want a mix of pea-sized lumps and finer crumbs. Shaking the bowl from side to side brings the big lumps to the surface, which is exactly where you want them.

Toss 700–800g prepared fruit with 50–75g sugar (less for sweet pears, more for Bramleys) and a tablespoon of cornflour to thicken the juices. Bake at 190°C (170°C fan, gas 5) for 35–40 minutes until the fruit bubbles at the edges. For a pie, line a buttered dish with shortcrust, add fruit that has been cooled if it was pre-cooked, and brush the lid with beaten egg. Bake at 200°C (180°C fan, gas 6) for 25 minutes, then drop to 180°C for a further 20. A thin layer of ground almonds or crushed biscuit under the fruit is cheap insurance against a soggy base.

Poaching, Freezing and Using Up the Rest

Poached pears are the most elegant thing you can do with an hour of gentle effort. Peel 4 firm pears, leave the stalks on, and simmer them in 500ml water, 150g caster sugar, a cinnamon stick, a star anise and a strip of lemon zest for 15–25 minutes depending on size. They are done when a skewer slides in with no resistance. Cool them in the syrup — that's where the flavour goes.

Nothing here freezes badly. Unbaked crumble freezes for three months; bake it from frozen, adding 10–15 minutes. Apple cake slices freeze well wrapped individually. Poached pears keep a fortnight in their syrup in the fridge, ready for porridge, yoghurt or a swift upside-down cake. And any peelings, cores or bruised fruit can be simmered into a spiced apple butter — the ultimate autumn spread for toast.