what's cooking today?

With my freezer and pantry devoid of baked goods, I wondered what to bake for the coming week's lunch boxes. It was a tall order. It had to be low in sugar and milk free (although yoghurt was ok). I also only had half a block of butter left, and just one lonely egg in the egg-box. I refused the temptation to visit the supermarket for more ingredients, as past experience showed that I always walked out with an extra half-dozen items that I suddenly urgently needed!
A flick through Mrs B's, Mrs Smith's, and Mrs Lawson's dog-eared tomes gave no solution, and the cupboard contents were thoroughly un-inspiring.

So, after discovering the left-over cooked apples from yesterdays dinner (pork with cream and apples), I decided mini apple pies were in order.
All was going well until I started to cut out the pastry circles for the patty tins and realised that I had made my usual error of underestimating how much pastry I needed for 24 little pies. I barely had enough for 8! So, after a quick change of plan, I made a quick sponge in the processor using half spelt flour, half cornmeal, baking powder, quarter cup of sugar (I figured the apples were sweet enough), the sole egg, rice bran oil, a glug of lemon juice and some yoghurt.

It was a fairly runny mixture, which I expected, but as I was 'inventing', I wasn't too sure how it would turn out.
Thankfully, 20 minutes or so later, the oven turned out 14 well-risen sponge-topped apple pies. They were good! Better than I thought. The hard part now is to make sure they do actually make it to the lunch boxes!