Dessert Dumplings {Recipe}

As you read this I am sitting my first WSET Diploma exam. Wish me luck!

There is no Happy Monday post this week because most of my happy moments were eating blocks of Dairy Milk with my head buried in a very dry textbook about grapevines. Thanks to the magic of the internet (let's just think about our lives 15 years ago- this invisible internet being really is magical) I was able to schedule an alternative post to pop into your life this morning. I hope it makes you happy. Dumplings always make me happy.

These little critters are comfort food to the max! Warm, syrupy, and doughy and crunchy at the same time. And remarkably easy to make.

The recipe is one I photocopied out of a Woman's Weekly in 2002 (with a few modifications). Misspent youth I'm telling you- collecting recipes. Thank goodness for the convenience of the internet or there would be even less room in my bookshelves.
You will need:
1 cup self-raising flour
pinch of salt
2 teaspoons suger (I used raw caster sugar)
60g unsalted butter, chopped
2 Tbsp water
1 apple, peeled and chopped into eight 2 cm cubes
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup macadamias (or nut of your choice), chopped

For the butterscotch sauce:
30g butter
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 Tbsp maple syrup
1 1/2 cups water
pinch of flaky salt or ground sea salt

Preheat oven to 180C
Sift flour and salt into a large bowl, add sugar. Rub in butter with your fingertips until it looks a bit like breadcrumbs. Add water and mix to a soft dough

Divide dough into 8 little balls. Flatten each ball and wrap it carefully around the apple cubes. Place dumplings into a shallow oven-proof dish.

For the sauce, combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and stir over a low heat until sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil and then remove from heat.

When it has stopped bubbling, pour the sauce over the dumplings.

Bake, uncovered for 20 minutes. Then remove from oven, spoon sauce over the top of the dumplings again and scatter with nuts

Bake another 10 minutes or until dumplings are brown and nuts are lightly toasted.

This recipe should serve four but we managed to plough through 3 each:)

Plate up with some ice cream or custard, drizzling the sauce over the top.

A little glass of muscat seals the deal.