Busy-Day Baked Quinces

This recipe is based on one of Claudia Roden’s and is one of the simplest ways of dealing with quinces that I know.

(Serves 8)

Ingredients

• 4 lge quinces, scrubbed clean
• 15 gms butter, cut into 8 sml pieces
• 1 C vanilla sugar
• 8 tsp water
• 8 sml (3 cm x .5 cm) strips orange peel (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 190ºC.

Cut the quinces in half and carefully cut out the cores. Set each half skin-side down on a 20 cm square of aluminium foil or baking paper. Place a piece of butter on each half, then sprinkle two tablespoons of vanilla sugar over each. Moisten each one with a teaspoonful of water, add the orange peel if you’re using it, and carefully seal the foil or paper into packages.

Place the packages the same way up in a large baking dish, taking care not to crowd them (use two dishes if necessary). Bake for two hours.

Allow to cool for 15 minutes before serving. Each package will contain a fragrant, collapsing, rose-coloured quince with garnet-hued jellied juices. Serve with ice-cream.