Michigan ghost apples

It's been an unseasonably warm winter, so I've been more worried about it being cold enough to prune my apple than so cold as to damage it, but looking through my old folders I found a reference to the Michigan Ghost Apples. These were created when an ice storm covered half-rotted apples left on a tree over winter. When the orchard owner went out to prune & tidy, he found ice moulds that had formed around the apples, and persisted while the innards turned to mush and drained away (you can see the mush exit holes on the bottom in some of the shots).

Not caught on film, but described in some of the articles about this phenomenon, was the orchard owner recounting that they had found some apples still inside their ice moulds, but that the act of moving the ice, or the heat from their hands, caused the rotten apple to drop, leaving behind these creepily perfect moulds.

I was put in mind of them by Crazy Delicious, a cooking show which takes place in an edible garden complete with a cheese cave, edible soil and a prosecco fountain.

This dish, a savoury apple dessert, frustrated the competitor because nothing froze fast or perfectly enough, meaning that her apples were puckered and curiously sinister. The judges, they loved that, and so did I  - they look strangely like the amazing Michigan ice apples, only (very) delicious.