A Bank Holiday Monday is a perfect opportunity for branching out and making something you don’t usually get to. So this week we invited a friend round and made two recipes, one sweet and one savoury. The sweet bake… Spiced Sticky Toffee Apple Buns.

The recipe we used comes from Dan Lepard’s brilliant Short and Sweet (which you should really own; especially since the Kindle version is only £3.99!) You can find a version over at the Guardian, but the recipe in the book uses pecans instead of walnuts and adds 25ml of rum into the caramel.

The result was brilliant. A great combination of sweet and tender apple, with a slight hint of rum. We misjudged the timings and didn’t allow long enough for the apples to cool, which made them soften the dough and cause some of the buns to collapse. As a result, some of the buns were a little misshapen, but that didn’t really ruin my enjoyment. A gnarly homemade bun beats a pristine shop-bought one any day!

When I repeat it, I would be inclined to increase the cinnamon a little, or maybe add some into the caramel. And perhaps sweeten the dough just a touch more, as a few mouthfuls from the bottom, where the glaze didn’t quite reach, were a little on the savoury side.

All in all, a great recipe and one I will definitely be doing again!