Do any of you have an actual recipe for (or remember a relative talking about) the apple treat called a Norfolk Biffin?
According to my Google-Fu, the Biffin was a 19th century apple snack that used the Norfolk Beefing apple variety. it was very slow roasted whole in a cooling bread oven to make use of the residual heat. The best blog I can find about them is this...
https://pryorfrancis.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/norfolk-biffins-or-beefings/The reason I am asking is that my local Farmers market turned up a box of Norfolk Beefing cooking apples and I grabbed a load for crumbles, went home and looked them up to see what type of apple they were. They are large, hard, thick-skinned late cookers that are supposed to store very well.
After reading the above blog, my curiosity was piqued and I took two of them, put them on a wire tray and popped them in a low 90C conventional oven for 18 hours to see what happened. After a couple of hours they were fragrant, evenly light brown and glossy. After ten hours they were mid-brown, wrinkled a little and somewhat soft but still pretty wet. I put a small plate on the top of them to help press the cooked innards against the skin to help with water loss. At 18 hours I needed the oven for something else so took them out and allowed them to cool. They were a little sticky where juice had leaked, had dark brown skins, were melting soft inside and the flesh had turned to a caramel colour. It came away from the remnants of the core very easily and was very aromatic and naturally sweet.
I am interested in finding out how far off an official "biffin" I was and would value opinions on what you think of the process. Any reminiscences? Any actual recipes?
