Trapped in Liquid Amber Toffee
We're baking tarts, we're painting our nails at home, we're buying chic shorts, we're perving on flowers.
Highly Enthused is a newsletter, once a podcast, concerning all the best things to consume in life. It’s written twice per month by Sophie McComas-Williams and Sophie Roberts, and today’s dispatch is written by SoMo! The majority of each newsletter is free, but there are five extra recs in each for paid subscribers. That’s often where the gold nuggets lie. Thanks for being here!
There’s nothing I love making more than tarte tatin in summer. Apple is the classic but stone fruits are ideal in this scenario, trapped in a liquid amber toffee and topped with golden puff. You can try so many different fruits (figs, plums, cherries) but peaches or apricots are the best, in my opinion, tart enough to match the caramel, but with enough heft to remain juicy to the tooth. To be honest I find these quite hard to screw up, the basic recipe goes:
Set a medium-sized oven-proof frypan over medium heat, and pre-heat the oven to 180-degrees for fan forced. Add about 1/2 a cup of caster sugar to the pan and leave it alone until it melts down into a deeply brown caramel, give it a stir if you need, and if it’s just not melting, add a tiny tiny splash of water. Watch it carefully so it doesn’t burn. Once it’s at a depth of caramel that you’re happy with, add a generous knob of butter, maybe 2 tbs, and a pinch of sea salt flakes. Stir together until combined into a glossy caramel. Remove from heat until you’re ready to add the fruit. I also like to add a couple of sprigs of rosemary here. Slice enough apricots in half to fill your pan, perhaps 5-6, and place cut-side down into the caramel so their little fuzzy butts are in the air. Cook over medium-low heat for a few minutes, until the bottoms of the apricots have slightly softened. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly. Cut out your puff pastry (I like Careme) into a circle large enough to drape generously over the apricots in the pan. Tuck the sides in. Bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes or until the pastry is completely puffed and golden brown. Let it cool for 10 minutes in the pan before flipping onto a plate. Serve with cream! Summer, it’s not over yet!
There’s something so charming about people coming together to watch a rare, almost-extinct, putrid flower put on a show. Putricia is a Corpse Flower out of Sumatra, the smelliest flower in the world, blooming only once every few years and only for 24 hours, releasing a stench of a rotted flesh. Botanic Gardens Sydney has installed theirs (it hasn’t bloomed in 15 years!) for viewing in the Palm House within the Gardens (there are CROWDS!), and are live streaming it so you can perve on it blooming from home. The comments on the YouTube livestream alone are worth a look. It’s so wholesome! Botany, guys!!! Every day they check its temperature and it’s rising, which means a bloom is imminent, is tonight the night? Surely there is no better Trump distraction than this. Blessed is the bloom.
Even though it’s been a moment in between formal events, I’ve been circling the brand Beare Park for a while. I missed their Sydney pop-up over the summer (devastating) but finally pulled the trigger on a pair of their roomy, ultra lightweight cotton twill Carmen Shorts this month, needing something a little more dressed up than denim in the shorts dept. They come in so many colours (I went with Olive, but how about the gold!) and are so good with a baggy tee or more interesting Going Out Top. Slightly stretchy at the waist, and falling just above the knee. Beare Park is a beautiful newish brand, with everything made in super small runs in Sydney and Melbourne (and yep, the price reflects the local ethos). On high, high rotation.
A quick-fire rundown of the miscellaneous finds we’ve loved this month. In this edition: Finally some excellent prescriptions sunglasses, my first sauna / ice bath experience, a chocolate cake to die for, USA-made nail polish that DOES NOT CHIP and a new pair of summer flats.