apple butter in a slow cooker

My kindergartner's class has a class "pet" in the form of a teddy bear known as Super Bear. Each kid in the class gets to take Super Bear home for the weekend a couple of times during the year. Super Bear comes with his very own journal, where his host's parents have to get to write about what adventures Super Bear had with the family. Lucky parents! They even are encouraged to include photos, drawings, ticket stubs or other crap very exciting memorabilia.

Don't get me wrong. I actually like it. My son loves having the bear here, and I am happy to photograph and record the things we do over the weekend. I am happy to write about it and glue in the pictures and send it all back to entertain the kiddos.

It just feels like so much pressure. What if our weekends are more boring than everyone else's? What if I forget to take pictures? What if we forget to bring the bear and the journal back on Monday morning? What if Super Bear gets dirty or torn? What if Super Bear gets lost?


Anyway, my particular little charming kindergartner managed to convince his mom and dad that having Super Bear as a guest at the house was a very. special. occasion. And that the very boring weekend we had on the books would never do. And that the bear... the stuffed bear... really wanted to go to the zoo.

As it turns out, we really didn't have much planned, and it was a beautiful weekend. A go swimming-go hiking-play baseball-be warm-soak up the sun kind of weekend. And yes, it ended up being a go-to-the-zoo kind of weekend as well.

I also picked up my Abundant Harvest box of produce this weekend. One of the optional add-on items was a 10-pound bag of really ugly apples for only $3. I'm not just being mean when I call them really ugly. The farmer himself told me so.

Although truthfully, I didn't think they were all that bad. They weren't ugly as much as lopsided. And some had warts.

But all told, there was only one bruise on one apple out of the two 10-pound bags I bought. I had gotten them with the idea of making apple butter out of the ugly little guys, but to my pleasant surprise I found that they were perfectly fine to just bite into and enjoy a delicious snack.

As I was retrieving the photos of the apple butter process, you would think that I had uploaded different cameras from different people all weekend:

A couple of pool pictures, a crockpot full of raw apples, a picture of the teddy bear at the zoo, a crockpot full of cooked apples, a picture from Bob's Big Boy restaurant, a picture of jars of apple butter sealed, labeled and ready to store.

Truthfully, although the apple butter requires a decent session of apple peeling and chopping, and a very long cooking process (13 hours in the crockpot, all told), it is very hands-off cooking. Let it slowly turn from apples and sugar and spices into delicious, smooth, silky, sweet apple butter while you go out and have fun!

First, peel and dice a crockpot full of apples. Mix together some sugar and spice and stir that into the apples.

Then, go out and enjoy a swim and some relaxation in the sun.

After an hour, turn the crockpot to low and leave it for 11 more hours. By the time that is done, you will have very soft apple pieces floating in brown, sugary, sweet juice.

While that is all happening, take a trip to the zoo.

After the 11 hours are done, take the lid off of the crockpot. Give the apples a big stir and let them cook for another hour with the lid off. Give it a good stir every so often. Or... go out for a hamburger.

After an hour, the apples should have turned into a lovely brown sauce. If you give it a real good whisking, you will end up with very small lumps. This is fine as it is, but I chose to give mine a whirl in the blender to get it all to a smooth consistency. (I have those dang picky kids who don't like lumpy food.)

Finally, pour it into jars and process them in boiling water. You now have about 6 or 7 pint-sized, beautifully sealed jars of apple butter than taste like a little bit of heaven and will keep for a year or more! (If you can stand to wait that long).

Here is the recipe:

5-9 pounds of apples
4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt

Peel and chop enough apples to fill your crockpot. You will use anywhere from 5-9 pounds, depending on how small you chop. The larger you chop them (and therefore the fewer apples you use) will mean that you might want to use a little less sugar.

Stir together the sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt, and then stir it into the apples.

Turn the crockpot on high for an hour. Then, turn it to low and let it cook 11 more hours.

After 11 hours, take the lid off and give the apples a good stirring. Let it cook one more hour with the lid off, stirring occasionally. After an hour, whisk it thoroughly. It should have some very small lumps. If you want, puree it in a blender or food processor to make it smooth.

Ladle into clean mason jars, and process in boiling water.

Here is a chart for processing times from The National Center for Home Food Preservation:

Table 1. Recommended process time for Apple Butter in a boiling-water canner.
		Process Time at Altitudes of
Style of Pack	Jar Size	0 - 1,000 ft	1,001 - 6,000 ft	Above 6,000 ft
Hot	Half-pints or Pints	5 min	10	15
	Quarts	10	15	20

If you don't know much about canning, here is a great set of instructions and information.

Apple crumb pie

-- or--
Christmas Pie #3 we never ate

My kids are little. At ages 5, 7, and 10, I realize they are still pretty small in the grand scheme of things. I realize they will get a lot bigger (and a lot more complicated). At this point, though, I am happy to have kids who are not so big yet.

When they were even littler, I thought it was so difficult to have kids. What with the diaper changing, and baby-proofing, and spoon-feeding. I was constantly watching for choking hazards, chasing toddlers, and buckling car seats and buckling Baby Bjorns and buckling strollers. If I wasn't rocking someone to sleep, I was picking someone else back up out of a crib, or listening to someone else "cry it out." At times, I thought I might go insane. So, I joined a mom's group. There were about 70 women who met twice a month. We had a potluck breakfast, sometimes invited a guest speaker, sometimes did a craft together, sometimes just chatted. We tucked all those little babies of ours safely away in a nursery with some wonderful babysitters, and we relaxed together. We enjoyed the break from baby tending, we commiserated and advised and hugged and cried and laughed.

My good friend was in charge of coming up with the craft ideas and implementing them within the group. It is no small feat to design a craft that 70 women (with a wide range of crafting ability and interests) can do in the general-purpose building of a church, on a very limited budget and even more limited time frame.  In the past there had been such crafts as candle holders, picture frames, and laminated babysitter instructions. There had been such dust-collectors as chalkboards and spoon rests.

This friend of mine wanted to make sure that we had more useful, universally appealing crafts. To this end, she had the brilliant idea one day of helping us all learn to make an apple pie. It seemed like the perfect thing! It could be done quickly and easily while seated at folding tables. And who doesn't want to take home an apple pie?

Well, unfortunately that day there was a guest speaker as well, who had gone well beyond her appointed time to speak. Being as she was kindly volunteering her time for us, no one wanted to cut her off, and we were running very late. Ordinarily we might have held the craft until our next meeting, but we didn't want the ingredients for 70 pies to go bad, and so we went ahead and made pie in the 10 minutes we had left.

It was chaos for those 10 minutes, with apple peelers and measuring cups flying around. People were tutoring each other in how to use a pastry blender, and people were borrowing a cup of sugar left and right. The recipe came to be known as "Panic Pie" for those 70 of us, but no one could deny that it worked, and it worked well. Seventy families had a delicious dinner that night. Not a single one of those women looked around at bedtime, and amid the piles of laundry and teething toys and dirty dishes,  had to wonder what the heck she had accomplished that day.

All of this is to say that 70 women (some of whom had never ever made a pie before in their lives) can make 70 apple pies, without even a kitchen, in only 10 minutes. This pie is easy and quick (once you have the apples peeled and chopped, there isn't much to it). It never fails. It is delicious. And even if you have never ever made pie before, you will be able to do this quickly, and it will taste delicious. I promise.

I try to use at least three varieties of apples when I make a pie, but you don't have to. I heard a pastry chef recommend this on a radio show once, and I took it to heart. She said that it works out the best to have the combination of different flavors and crispnesses together. I used Granny Smith (the stand-by baking apple) as well as pippins and fujis. Almost any tart apple will work well.

Apple Crumb Pie
(otherwise known as Panic Pie)

crust for a 9" pie (make your own or buy one), unbaked

4-6 large apples, peeled, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1 c. sugar, divided

1 tsp. Cinnamon, ground

¾ c. flour

1/3 c. butter, cut in pieces

Preheat oven to 400.

In a large bowl, toss the apples with 1/2 cup sugar and the cinnamon. Arrange in the pie shell.

Mix flour and remaining ½ cup sugar. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut buter in until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (This can be done in a food processor, if you prefer.)

Sprinkle over apples.

 Bake 40 minutes or until apples are tender. Cool on a wire rack.

Creamy broccoli and apple slaw and broccoli and blue cheese salad

This week is "Broccoli Ten Ways in Five Days" where I am trying out all 10 recipe suggestions Real Simple Magazine highlighted for broccoli in their September 2011 issue. Today is day three. You can browse day one and two if you'd like.

Today I have two salads for you, and once again they are very different. One is made with steamed broccoli and topped with a creamy blue cheese dressing; the other is a raw broccoli slaw, that has a bit of tang to it. I loved them both, but I came to the realization that I am a slaw lover. I like the way it is chopped fine, which makes for easy eating. I also love that the dressing is evenly distributed, and it keeps well. That makes it super convenient to make ahead. I never miss lunch when I have some slaw in the fridge. I can just pull it out and it is ready to eat... so even if I only have 2 minutes for lunch (which seems all too often) I still have a decent lunch, filled with fresh veggies.

Creamy Broccoli and Apple Slaw

This was just divine. I didn't change anything from the recipe, and when I make it again, I won't change anything then, either.

In a large bowl, mix together 1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt, 1/4 cup mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon cider vinegar, and 1 chopped small shallot; season with salt and pepper. Add 1/2 bunch finely chopped broccoli (3 cups), 1/2 finely chopped apple, 1/4 cup dried cranberries, and 2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts and toss to combine.

Broccoli and Blue Cheese Salad

I was SO looking forward to trying this one because, well, blue cheese. Yum. I did love it, but I think if I were to make it again, I wouldn't steam the broccoli. I would leave it raw and chop it more finely. The steamed broccoli just tends to leak water forever, and that kind of ruins the look of it all. I don't like broccoli water swirling with creamy dressing. Call me crazy. The flavor was excellent, though! That dressing is going on a lot of salads around here, I can assure you.

Steam 1 bunch broccoli (cut into florets, 6 cups) until tender, 5 to 7 minutes; rinse with cold water to cool. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together 1/4 cup buttermilk, 2 tablespoons sour cream, 2 ounces crumbled blue cheese, 1 sliced scallion, and 1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar; season with salt and pepper. Top the broccoli with the buttermilk dressing and 1/2 cup toasted walnuts.

zucchini-apple bread

oh my. November?

Already?

I am not sure I was actually here for the month of October, because I don't really remember it.

I have been busy busy busy. There were Halloween Parties for all three kids in their classrooms, which meant some baking, shopping, prepping, and playing.

There were three Halloween costumes to create.

There was a school carnival (for which I somehow got in charge of two booths), testing for the next belt level in kung fu for two kids, and oral surgery for one.

There were Halloween parties to attend, to drop off and pick up from, and to help out at, and of course there was trick-or-treating.

There were many many fundraisers for Breast Cancer awareness month. I am leaving in just two weeks (egad!) for San Diego, where I will be walking 60 miles with seven of my very best friends in the whole wide world. It's no coincidence that they make up more than 50% of my blog readership. Without these people I would truly be lost. One of them is Jason of The Jason Show. If you didn't come to my blog from him, you should head over to him. He can tell you more about my besties in his post after the 3-day walk last year, and you can read about some of our fundraisers in his post from last week. So there, my alibi for why I haven't been blogging has a witness.

The one that was probably the most fun was the Goodwill Truck... Goodwill paid us to collect junk previously loved objects from our friends and fill up a truck with them. For a few weeks, we sought and received lovely items from just about everyone we know, and then for one long day we made trips back and forth, emptying our garages and filling up that truck. Doesn't that sound like a good time? Okay, you would have to know my friends to understand why a day of driving, loading, carrying and hauling other people's crap is fun. They are the funniest, warmest, kindest, happiest people I know. Spending a day shoveling dog poop would be okay by me if I was with my team.

One of our other fundraisers was a bake sale. We have a local pumpkin patch/farm that is the coolest place around at Halloween time. For a city girl who grew up getting a pumpkin from the local grocery store, Lombardi Ranch feels like a wonderland to me. The kids get to wander through acres of pumpkins of all different shapes, sizes and colors, to find just the right one. They get to climb on antique farm equipment, scale towers of hay bales, visit the animals, take a wagon ride, make their way through a corn maze, and check out Scarecrow Alley. It's no wonder that just about every child in our city makes his or her way to Lombardi Ranch at least once during the month of October.

Lucky for us, the owners of the joint set up a booth and allow one charitable group per day to host a bake sale, and to keep all of the profit. Since we were lucky enough to sign up for the last Friday before Halloween, we had a busy day and sold over $700 of cookies, brownies, cupcakes and breads. Going for $1 apiece most often, that translates into lots of baking beforehand!

I spent the last two days before the sale baking:
10 loaves of zucchini apple bread
3 dozen mummy pops
2 dozen brownies
2 dozen cupcakes
7 dozen cookies

It was exhausting! But my house sure smelled good!

Here are the mummy pops I made:

Aren't they cute? Hop over here to my very cute baking friend for the details on these guys. She is amazing! She actually let me invade her kitchen for the morning, gave me a private tutorial, and didn't laugh at all my mistakes. A good friend, indeed! While you're there, check out everything Kirsten does... she's ten times the baker that I am.

And here is the zucchini-apple bread.

 It is not as cute, but it is very delicious. The apples and the applesauce give it a nice density and make sure it isn't too dry. It actually lasts a few days, because all the zucchini and apples help it not get stale the by the morning after you bake it.

Zucchini Apple Bread          
I got this recipe here, before I changed bits and pieces of it.
(this makes two loaves... but it doubles and even triples easily!)

The zucchini and apple can be grated in a food processor. You don't even need to peel the apple!

butter (for the pans)
1 cup grated zucchini (about 1 medium zucchini)
1 cup grated apple (about 1 apple, cored)
1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
1 cup apple sauce (I used my own, but a jar of apple sauce form the store works just as well)
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Coat 2 standard loaf pans (or more smaller loaf pans) with butter.

Combine the zucchini, apple, brown sugar, apple sauce, eggs and vanilla in a large bowl. Add flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix well.

Divide the batter between the loaf pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean... about 50 minutes for a standard loaf pan, about 40-45 minutes for a smaller loaf.

Remove the breads from the loaf pans and let them cool on a wire rack.

dorset apple cake

I am trying out this idea of a blogging party. I think. Is that what you call it?  Or is it a link party? It's called the Improv Challenge. But it's planned very well in advance, so I am not sure where the Improv part comes in. Anyway, I was invited to this ... um, event, and I felt so very much like I am in the "in" crowd. Of course, I let them know that I would have to check my schedule and maybe pencil them in, just so I could seem even cooler. Really, though, who doesn't like being invited somewhere? Or sometime, as the case may be? I was rather touched.


I guess there will be a link to me, and down below all of my incessant rambling I am giving you a link to them. And by "them" I mean a whole bunch of other people who are participating. You need to click on that link and see what other, more creative people did to rise to the challenge. I can only imagine how inferior I am going to feel when I see what everyone else comes up with.


The challenge this month was to create something with apples and caramel. I think these people might be more of bakers than vegetable artisans, so we'll see how long our relationship goes before we have to claim artistic differences and go our separate ways. However, I must say we are off to a fabulous start. Maybe it's just the honeymoon stage, but they want me to use apples, and my Abundant Harvest Organics box this week contains many many tart green apples. You know how much I love to use up the items in that box! And if you don't know, welcome to my blog. This is where I complain about using up the vegetables and fruits that pour into my home at alarmingly speedy rates.


So, I was planning to cook something with these tart apples long before I got the invitation to be challenged. Or to improvise. Or to party or link or play along. 

One Thanksgiving, many many years ago, my sister-in-law hosted both sides of her family at her home. One of the guests was her grandmother, who had met her grandfather while he was stationed in Germany during World War II. She fell in love with the American soldier and followed him to the land of the free. Along with all of her worldly possessions,  her grandmother brought a recipe for apple cake from the Motherland. And then, she did some other things for 50 years, before she brought apple cake to my sister-in-law's house for Thanksgiving. The cake was very very dense and rich and delicious. And it had apples in it. And I remember Großmutter mentioning that the cake called for no wet ingredients, but rather the moisture came entirely from the apples that were mixed in with all of the dry ingredients. Other than that, about all I can remember is that it was brownish (probably from cinnamon?), it was an entire sheet cake, and the dog ate all of the leftovers before morning.


Well, I always meant to get that recipe. But like many things I mean to do, I kept putting it off. And since my sister-in-law's grandmother died a few years later, I waited too long. I tried googling apple cake recipes. I tired search parameters like "German" and "no liquid" and "dense" and everything else I could think of. But I haven't found anything that seems like the right cake.


In other words, the cake I made here, today, has absolutely nothing to do with the old German grandmother I met at Thanksgiving long ago.


But it is a very delicious, not-too-sweet, dense apple cake, from the other side of the pond.


This one just happens to be small and round as opposed to a sheet cake. It happens to contain no cinnamon whatsoever. And it is from Dorset, in England, which is on the same continent but the other side of Germany in WWII. So, basically the similarities are that it is made with apples. 


I found the recipe for this when I was searching for that other cake. And although I tweaked it here and 
there to fit my needs, I am sure glad I stumbled on Dorset Apple Cake. I flipped it upside down by putting the apple slices in the pan first, sort of like a pineapple upside-down cake. I left out the sultanas, once I learned that they are actually raisins (yuck!) and I added some brown sugar to the top (which became the bottom) before baking, so it would have a nice caramel-y layer. I don't know this counts as a recipe with "apples and caramel" for this party/link/improv/event, but it's what I am submitting. 


It's not too sweet. It is really like a coffee cake. It doesn't have much in the way of liquids, and that turns out to be okay, because it has tons of apples that release their juices as they bake. This particular cake happened to go to the second grade teachers at my kids' school, after taking all 80 second graders on a field trip to the Nature Center where they met owls and went on hikes. If those teachers don't deserve a token of my appreciation, who does? And now I have hit two of the grade levels at school. Kindergarten, I am looking at you next!

The measurements are a bit wonky (as they say in and around Dorset, England), because I had to calculate all of the measurements from grams and ounces and tins to cups and teaspoons and cake pans. Bear with me, it's worth it.


 Dorset Apple Cake
(which mostly came from this recipe here.)


1 3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
8 teaspoons cornstarch
1 stick cold butter (plus more for the pan)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 pound apples, peeled, cored, and diced (about 2 cups)
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
2 more apples, skins still on, sliced into very thin wedges
1/4 cup brown sugar


First, preheat the oven to 375 fahrenheit, and prepare a 9-inch round baking dish by buttering it.


Sift together the flour, cornstarch, and baking powder. Cut the butter into small pieces and cut it into the flour mixture with a couple of forks or a pastry blender. The result should be a coarse, crumbly mixture. Stir in the chopped apples and sugar. 


In a small bowl, lightly beat the egg. Stir in the milk. Add this mixture to the flour and apple mixture. It will be very dry, but do your best to get it evenly distributed. Set this batter aside.


Slice two apples into very thin slices, and arrange them in concentric circles in the pan.

Carefully (so as not to disturb the arranged apples), put the batter into the pan. It is very dry and lumpy, so lightly press down on it to make it take shape.

Sprinkle the brown sugar over it all. This will caramelize in the oven, and give the cake a nice sweet, caramelly bottom once it is inverted.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, until it is just starting to turn golden.

Let it cool before taking it out of the pan. If some of the apples stick in the pan, just gently release them and tuck them back where they belong of the top of the cake!

Enjoy!

And now, go enjoy some other ways people interpreted "apples and caramel."

 

apple chips

Got a couple of hours to sit back and let your oven work for you? Want your house to smell great? Want to make a treat that is healthy and delicious?

Well, step right up! This here is the greatest snack ever invented. It will cure bad weather blues, scurvy, and all kinds of aches and pains. It will give your skin a healthy glow, reverse air pollution, and empty the landfills. It will even make your dog mind you.

Okay... at least it is healthy and delicious. And it does make the house smell good. All appley and cinnamony and delicious.

These apple chips require just apples. If they are particularly tart, you may want to add some sugar (I did), and if you like cinnamon with your apples, by all means don't hold back. You won't regret it.

For me, they translate into a good way to transport apples in lunch bags without getting complaints about them turning brown and yucky.

Really, all you do is core the apples and then slice them really thin (get out your mandolin), and bake them for a long time at a low temperature. They are so easy, the hardest part is keeping the kids from eating them before you have a chance to pack them into lunch boxes.

Set the oven to 250. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. This is a must. You will never scrape them off the pan if you don't.

Lay the apple slices out in a single layer, and sprinkle on sugar and cinnamon as desired. Bake them for 2 hours, until the are dried and crispy.

Apple Sauce. And Jesus.

In my Abundant Harvest box this week, I got this big beautiful bunch of green apples.

The kids were so excited to see apples that they bit right into them... and then puckered up their little faces. They're pretty tart, as it turns out.

I decided to make applesauce out of them... 

... but before I give you the recipe, I need to tell you that Jesus was in my kitchen.

You know how some people see Jesus in different objects? And then they are born again and become religious and saved? 

For example, Jesus has been seen in a tree:

 Or a KitKat bar:

One person even saw Jesus in the dregs of his beer. Well, probably lots of people have seen Jesus in the dregs of their beer, but one person still had enough sense left in him to photograph it:

And, of course, if you are a fan of Glee, you will remember the grilled Jesus:

Remember that bowl of apples I showed at the beginning? I emptied it and peeled the apples, and then inverted the empty bowl into my dishwasher. And. There. Was. Jesus.

I'm warning you, this is not for the faint of heart. Jesus is there (at least I think it's him). But he is NOT happy.

scroll down if you are stout hearted enough to view sad apple bowl Jesus. Also scroll down if you want to get past this nonsense and make apple sauce.

I warned you. Not happy.

At any rate, after doing penance and atoning and a couple of other things, I made the applesauce.

And here is how:

Peel your apples and chop them into little chunks.

Put them all in a pot and fill with just enough water to almost cover them. Add some sugar. Not too much (maybe a couple of tablespoons?). You can always add more later, so you can decide just how sweet you need it to be. You can also add a little cinnamon if that's your thing.

Let is all simmer for a long long long time. This pot simmered for about an hour. Stir it every so often. When you can see that the apples are all turning to mush, you are done! You can stop while it is a little chunky if you'd like, or you can keep going until it is pretty smooth. Add some more sugar if you want, and voila! Apple Sauce!

We go through apple sauce pretty quickly around here, so I didn't bother sealing and preserving the jars. They won't stay in the fridge long enough to warrant it. But if you wanted to, you could follow these instructions.