Autumn Apples

Fall officially arrived, though it has hinted its presence even earlier than the Autumnal Equinox here in Massachusetts.  The chill in the air and the leafy greens losing its brightness and changing into muted yellows.  Even in the markets fall can be felt with the emphasis on pushing specific items like apples, Halloween candies, and assorted gourds.  Or perhaps there are other items seasonal to your area that you’re seeing in abundance this time of year.  What are some quintessential fall associations for you?

Apples has been on my mind lately, though.  Hearing friends’ adventures to apple picking orchards or farms, seeing pictures of the fruits of their labor, and their enjoying the outdoors among the foliage.  And though I haven’t actually participated in any apple picking activity, nor have I bought the “fresh picked” 5 pound bag of apples from the market, I’ve still benefitted from the fruit…  I’m the lucky recipient of the fruit of my friends’ labors.  And, of course, I try to think of how I’m going to use these little gems up before it spoils.  After all, that adage, “One rotten apple, spoils the bunch” is popular for a reason.  It is true.

So one of the benefits of having fresh apples at the ready is being more prone to eating them fresh (skin and all), which is how I’ll get the most nutrition out of them.  I’ve already cut up apples to eat plain, AND dressed with a little caramel dip, too.  Yum.  I’ve also cooked with it.  I’ve sautéed little apple cubes into a spam + veggie noodle stir fry, as well as baked and made sweet things with it.  Here are the other prime examples of my utilizing this fall fruit:

I saw a great recipe for an apple butter, which seemed somewhat quick and simple enough, and I wanted to try out making my own very tasty version!  So I roasted about 7 medium Macintosh apples in the oven and mashed them together with the skins and core intact.  The picture below is the result of mashing all that together into an almost puree.  The recipe then called for using a food mill or sieve to strain out the skins and seeds.  Looking back, I should’ve listened to the recipe tip when it said you can skin and core the apples if you don’t have a food mill.  But I didn’t listen at the time and thought, “it can’t be that difficult to use a sieve to separate it.”  It was some tedious work not having a food mill!

But after having separated out all the skin, seeds, and the miscellany unwanted, I got a nice smooth puree of roasted apple.  I put it into a small sauce pan to continue to reduce, and mixed it with spices and added some molasses for more depth.  The picture below is the end result of simmering and infusing with the spices.  Yummy.  Boy, was it tasty!

I poured that into some clean jars to be popped into the fridge for later consumption.  Man, apple butter sure is good.  I remember having had my first taste of apple butter years back in my college days.  I attended a college in a more country setting that was surrounded by farmland (or at least it seemed compared to the big city).  I ate at a cafe known for its popovers and it was served with a local farm’s apple butter.  My tastebuds were changed from that moment!!!  Popovers AND apple butter were a wonderful new novelty! 😀  I love food memory associations… my food memory always seem to stick with me, even when my other memories are a little scattered at times.  (That shows you where my priorities lie…haha.)

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And onto the next apple item I made:  a crockpot apple pancake cake.

I made a crockpot blueberry pancake cake a couple weeks ago and thought it might be just as tasty with cinnamon spiced apples.  Different, but just as tasty!  I changed up my pancake batter a little by using some cornmeal.  I may have used a bit too much baking soda in the recipe as it came out a little more dense than I would’ve liked, but it was still good.  I softened up the recipe by topping it off with more cinnamon spiced apple sauce.  Wilting some apples with cinnamon, ginger, sugar, nutmeg, and clove with some heat.  The sugar makes a nice little sauce with the spices.  Poured that over a slice of the apple pancake cake, and done.

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Below is, yet, another apple reincarnation:  a puff pastry ricotta & apple tartlet

These mini little puff pastry squares are carved to allow a filling of sweetened ricotta, a dollop of my homemade apple butter, then topped with an apple slice.  I’ve done something similar before with a more summery twist, instead of apple butter, the sweet ricotta would be topped with summer berries.  No need to make your own puff pastry when you can buy a freezer ready version.  Tasty and easy!

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All apple-d out yet?  I’m still looking at another apple recipe.  An apple and fennel soup.  😀  I’ll let you know if that happens…

A Week (or two) in Food Exploits

Feeling the need, obviously, to post gratuitous pictures of food.  Why?  Because we all enjoy looking at it, that’s why there’s such a thing as ‘food porn’.  At the very least, I like to browse pictures of food even if it tortures me  because I don’t get to join in eating it.  I enjoy it because of what the pictures may inspire in me: cooking ideas, food styling ideas, my imaginings of what the pictured food would taste like, and ultimately, it inspires me to want to cook.  Like any creative outlet, that’s a good thing when it inspires you into action.

So here are some of my cooking exploits (only snacks and sweets) from the past two weeks.
(Note: Although I would love to have better shots of my food, I don’t always have the best situations to create it.  Many of these pictures are taken with a camera phone and lighting isn’t always ideal.  At the very least, I do attempt to style it as nicely as possible… since you also eat with your eyes and other senses.  And if you know me, I love food aesthetics as much as I do eating it 😛 .)

Caramel dip with local New England apples

All right, so there wasn’t actually much cooking involved in this since I didn’t make the caramel dip.  I bought it from Whole Foods (a grocery market chain that likes to think of itself as organic), and it’s pretty darn good.  I had gotten it to pair with birthday cake, but a little goes a long way and it still was in my fridge.  (Believe me, I’m not complaining.)  It is enriched with butter and cream, no doubt.  Luckily, it pairs well with apples, too.  Eating it this way will trick me into believing I’m eating healthy.

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Savory tomato zucchini (both from my CSA) tart

Pictured above., I used frozen puff pastry (it’s a wonderful, time-saving creation) and slathered it with a herbed cheese spread (much like one might slather marinara sauce on a pizza).  I pre-sauteed zucchini and tomato slices and layered it on top.  A quick stay in the freezer to set before popping it into a piping hot oven, then when the edges are golden in color some 15 or so minutes later… Voilà!

This is my simple, go-to food idea when needing to cook something for others.  You can get creative and top the puff pastry with anything really (sweet or savory or a combination).  I typically will keep a package of puff pastry in the freezer for whenever the occasion arises.

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Blueberry pancake cake

The inspiration for this came from Huffington Post’s Taste section.  Here is the recipe for this Crock-pot Blueberry Pancake Cake.  Your welcome, and I know!  One, it’s made in a crock-pot, which makes it sound incredibly easy and like it requires minimal effort.  Which are both true.  Two, pancake cake?  Was that a typo?  No, it wasn’t.  It’s basically a cake in likeness, but made out of pancake batter (you can use any pancake mix you want).  Which is all GREAT!

I happened to have some pancake mix I made from scratch a while back, and needed to use up.  It had some brown sugar already in it and cornmeal, along with the basic flour, baking powder and salt (if you’d like to make your own pancake mix, just look up any pancake recipe and combine only the dry ingredients; set it aside with the measurements for wet ingredients and instructions for later.)  I mixed it with milk, and didn’t have an egg so I used half of a banana mashed up, then followed the rest of the instructions.  Some time later, it was ready in the crock-pot, already filling the air with the aroma of banana and sweetness.  I peeled it off the parchment paper, served it with a sprinkling of agave nectar and raw sugar.  And my guests and I were very pleasantly surprised by this recipe.  TOTALLY will make again with other flavor combos!

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Party favor treat bags

Again, this one is a bit of a stretch, since this also didn’t involve any cooking.  It’s one of my crafts, but it involved a food.  I made party favor treat bags for a child’s birthday party, and was debating whether I should make some sort of treat.  But not knowing how many people were in attendance and people having different tastes and allergies, there’s always the familiar candy.  I had a lot of fun finding cute, kid-friendly pictures, then printed it onto sticker paper.  I cut it out and allowed for write-in space to personalize it.  Then attach to plain, cellophane treat bags!  Appreciated by adults and children alike 🙂 .

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Nut covered chocolate truffles

These babies were a happy accident… or at least, I didn’t have the intention of making them, they were just a by product from another cooking project (chocolate covered Newman-O’s, which are much like Oreos; I love the mint flavor!).  So I wanted to make something, but didn’t really want to get caught up in a huge cooking ordeal with lots of ingredients and mess.  I had Newman-O’s and I had semi-sweet chocolate chips.  I thought why not do a faux cooking project and make chocolate covered Newman-O’s?  I say faux cooking because I only altered the state of store bought items (meaning: nothing I made).  I melted chocolate chips and dipped cookies into that fluid mixture, the end product being something improved 🙂 .

What to do with leftover melted chocolate?  Make truffles or chocolate sauce to go on top of ice cream or other dessert.  The truffles are made from this leftover melted chocolate.  Added to that is half & half, butter, and almond extract.  I left that in the fridge overnight.  Then took two teaspoons to dig up some balls of chocolate, rolled it in the crushed almonds, and finished rounding it out into balls lightly in my hands.  After making some handfuls, I’d pop them (and the entire chocolate mixture) in the fridge so they wouldn’t soften and flatten out on the bottom from sitting on a tray.  When I was done with all of the chocolate, I popped them into the fridge for a quick chill before presenting and eating.  And that’s that, a happy and yummy accident!