Apples, Bananas and Crumble

Went over to the girlfriend's for the afternoon to catch up. She was going to be baking things. I was like...whatever, I could hang around, but I would disappear up three floors when the mix goes into the oven to be baked. I can't stand that baking smell, that smell of butter heating up in the flour. It's nauseating. I rate this worse than the smell of durians. What's more horrifying than one girlfriend baking? A full baking party when there're more than four girls or guys gathered in a kitchen ready to bake and talking all about the bakes. Sorry, I'm a big fat zero fail when it comes to this sort of tête-à-tête.

I was not encouraged to have sugar as a kid. As a result, I've never liked sweets or sugar. Not even honey. Even chocolates gotta be at least 70% cacao, bitter. Don't even want to do cookies. Too much sugar ingested makes me bounce off the walls. It gives me this bad trip that when after the sugar rush, the fall is worse than being drunk. Migraines and too-bright surroundings. Same end- I puke.

However, she was making crumble, which shouldn't smell as bad as cakes and loaves in the oven. An apple and a second, banana-raisin thingy. She had me buy unsalted butter and apples from the market. I wasn't going near the stall or the two supermarkets that would stock Bramley cooking apples. So she asked me to get Granny Smith. It was a full five minutes later that I would realize that she didn't say whether to get red or green apples. Luckily I clarified. She ASSUMED I knew. Bad idea. I'm that one who still can't differentiate between radish and turnip. 

She set me on peeling apples, with a knife. I flatly refused. I don't know how to do that. I've NEVER had to do that. That's why they invented tools like the peeler and corer/divider right? She didn't own any of those. In the end, she peeled those apples and I sliced them up. She also made me sort out the bananas. That was fine. Slicing was manageable. "You're not a very useful kitchen elf!" She wrinkled her nose at me. Hahahaha. Not as if she doesn't know it already!

Anyway, it wasn't so bad. Crumble didn't smell too bad baking. When the dessert came out, her family came over and we shared. They didn't finish it because they thought it needed more cream, sugar, nuts, vanilla ice-cream and all. The girlfriend stared at my bowl. I finished my portion. She was surprised.

WELL. Precisely. I've such low threshold for sugar. She didn't put a lot. It bordered on 'okay' for me. She didn't put that much butter either! The flavors were a little one dimensional. But that could be easily improved. It could have been better with more apples/bananas and a more browned crust, but like this, it was fine by me. In fact, it might be the only version of her bakes that I would merrily eat without grimacing. Muahahahaha.