Let’s do this together

Food tech was cancelled this week because the school kitchens were like the depths of Hell but with more muffin tins, so The Dark Lord insisted on making this week’s apple pie at home instead.

Which is why I found myself making steaming custard to go with a volcanically hot apple pie in the furnace of our house last night. Then having to scrape the bubbled-over sugary juices off the bottom of the oven, which had hardened into gritty black toffee, as The Dark Lord failed to use a tray under her pie dish.

“What do you think of it?” she said, shovelling pie into her gob, as the sweat prickled her brow.

I took a mouthful and said, “It’s the best apple pie I have ever eaten in tropical temperatures. I can’t think why it’s not the national dish in the Amazon.”

I also have to thank Rosy in Northampton who wrote in with a tip to stop the apples going brown. She writes: “If you have to use prepared cooking apples which will turn brown quickly, you could buy frozen Bramleys from the supermarket. They stay nice and white.”

Great idea, Rosy, but I’d already bought the apples, so I chopped and froze them myself, pausing only to stick my head in the freezer for a bit of a relief from the soaring temperatures.

I remember when The Dark Lord was in primary school, we’d get letters warning that if we sent them in without a sun hat, factor 50 and a water bottle, they would almost certainly sizzle to death or perish from dehydration.

Then in secondary school it’s… nada… nothing. The Dark Lord says they had to beg the teachers at her school to be allowed to come in PE kit yesterday, which also happens to be black and synthetic. It’s just asking for self-combusting teenagers.

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.