3 Times Thursday - Autumn Apples

For this week's 3 Times Thursday, enjoy autumn's best gift - apples! Fall in New England means it's time to head to your local orchard and do the "Twist and Pull!" And since it's cooler out, you won't mind turning on the oven to bake ones of these autumn apple favorites. 

3. Square Cider Donuts - Although this one doesn't use apples per se, it does use apple cider, and all the best local orchards will be selling theirs this month and next. Why square? Why not?!?

Makes 24 doughnuts plus 24 doughnut holes

Ingredients:

canola oil for frying

1 egg

1 1/4 cup sugar, divided

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup apple cider
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup flour
2 cups baking mix (we used Bisquick)

Preheat oil in a large pot, skillet or deep fryer to 375 degrees, checking the temperature often using a candy thermometer. Whisk together egg, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, cider and vanilla. Using a wooden spoon, stir in flour and baking mix. On floured surface, with floured hands, knead dough several times and roll to 1/2-inch thick.  Cut with a donut or biscuit cutter, and make holes in the center of each. Carefully drop into hot oil. Working in batches of six, cook until golden brown, flip, and cook other side until golden brown. Adjust the heat on the burner as necessary to keep the temperature steady at 375.  Drain on sheets of newspaper or paper towels. Mix together remaining 1 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon; while doughnuts are still hot, coat in cinnamon-sugar. Eat while still warm!

2. Apple Pie - No apple dessert list would be complete without a recipe for classic apple pie. Or should we say, pie filling, since we cheat and use Pillsbury crust. 

Ingredients:

1 package refrigerated pie crust, or homemade crust
10 apples, variety of your choosing, peeled, cored and diced
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons apple pie spice
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 425. Place one pie crust in an ungreased pie plate and press firmly against the side and bottom of the dish. In a large bowl, toss the diced apples with the lemon juice. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients well. Pour the dry ingredients into the bowl with the apples and mix well so that all the apples are coated. Spoon the filling into the crust-lined pie plate. Cut the butter into pats and place randomly on top of the apple pie filling. Top with the second crust and press the edges together to seal (if using refrigerated pie crust, see package directions for a two-crust pie). Brush the crust with the milk. Cut slits in several places in the top crust and bake for 45 minutes, until apples are tender and the crust is brown. Cool for at least an hour before serving.

1. Onyx Moonshine Apple Cake - We soak our apples in our favorite local moonshine for 24 hours, then use a friend's apple cake recipe to make this boozy confection.

Cake Ingredients:

5 medium apples, peeled and diced (feel free to soak them in Onyx Moonshine for a day or so, if you dare)

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

Topping: 

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine all cake ingredients in a large bowl, and toss to coat apples. Place in a 9X13 pan that has been greased with butter or sprayed with cooking spray. In a separate bowl, combine topping ingredients and pat over top before placing in oven. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until bubbly. If desired, dust with confectioner's sugar before serving.

Turkey Pot Pie Soup

Behold the day-after-Thanksgiving sandwich. Juicy turkey breast, a layer of stuffing (or dressing, if you're a Southerner) and a touch of cranberry mixed into the mayonnaise recreate the holiday dinner bite after glorious bite. However, you can only have so many turkey sandwiches before the glory subsides and it's just another plate of leftovers.

When you are at that point and you still, somehow, have turkey meat left, it's time to try something new. Soup? Been there. Pot pie? Done that. In the spirit of the "cronut," the "stuffle," and countless other hybrid foods, we give you (the not-so-cleverly-named) Turkey Pot Pie Soup.

A touch of flour and some half-and-half transports this concoction from mere soup to pot pie territory. Otherwise, the ingredients are the same. Why sage? Because it's still thriving in our garden. Dried herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme) or whatever you have on hand will work just fine. We made a homemade stock from our turkey carcasses, but go ahead and allow yourself to use store-bought turkey or chicken stock or broth.  If you're feeling creative, get out a cookie cutter and bake some puff pastry into festive shapes. Or be lazy like us and serve it with bread or biscuits.

Turkey Pot Pie Soup

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 small yellow onion, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage

2 carrots, peeled and diced

4 cups turkey stock

1 cup half-and-half

1 1/2 cups your favorite (or your leftover) vegetable (we used a can of peas, drained)

3 cups leftover turkey meat, chopped into bite-sized pieces

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Melt butter in a large soup pot. Add onion and celery, and cook until onions are translucent, about 2 minutes. Add flour and cook another 2 minutes. Stir in sage and carrots. Pour in broth and half-and-half, cover, and bring just to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, for 10-15 minutes, until carrots begin to soften. Add the peas (or other vegetable) and turkey and cook about 5 more minutes until meat is warmed through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Slightly Smoky Ham and Bean Soup

We attended an Oktoberfest celebration thrown by friends C and L, and indulged in some hearty beer, homemade soft pretzels, spiraled ham, grilled brats and other sausages, and fabulous fall desserts (among other things). And then, C and L were generous enough to let us take home the ham bone along with some of the leftover meat. Chris had his eye on that bone all night, so he was delighted, and started trawling the web for soup recipes the very next morning. He finally chose the recipe for "Northwoods Smoked Ham and Bean Soup by Crock-Pot" from ICookbook, an app on his IPad, and as usual, we fiddled with it, adjusted it, and in an effort to avoid errands, did what we could with what we had. 

This recipe has a lot of wonderful qualities. The best part is that this is a slow cooker recipe. That almost all of the work is done for you by that magical little machine, while you are at work, or wherever it is you go during the day. Which is made even more wonderful by the aroma that greets you when you come back from wherever you were. Plus the fact that you are probably tired from wherever you had been, and now dinner is already done. Oh, the fabulousness! 

The ham was sweet, and we wanted a little smoky flavor, so we added a couple of dashes of liquid smoke. We decided against adding pasta, because we felt it was hearty and chunky enough with the beans, and neither of us need the extra carbs right now. It's definitely our kind of soup, similar to, but different enough from our Tuscan Sausage Soup or our White Bean and Leftover-Easter-Ham Soup.

Slightly Smoky Ham and Bean Soup

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 red onion, chopped

4 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced

6 cups chicken stock (we ran out at 5 cups, so used 1 cup water)

1 leftover ham bone (from a large spiraled ham, with meat scraps still on it)

2 cups cubed cooked ham

28 ounces diced tomatoes, undrained

1 tablespoon dried parsley

4 sprigs fresh thyme

4 bay leaves

5 dashes liquid smoke 

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 15-ounce can canellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 15-ounce can small white beans, drained and rinsed

Heat olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute. Place onion and garlic mixture, stock, ham bone, ham, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, liquid smoke, salt and pepper in slow cooker. Cook on low for 10 hours or on high for 6 hours. Stir in beans, and cook for about 15 additional minutes, or until heated through.

Soft and Chewy Gingersnaps for Secret Recipe Club

It's been a perfect fall weekend - bright and sunny with a slight crispness in the air and leaves falling everywhere. And to top it all off, it's Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day! The blog we were assigned for October was Mommy's Menu, written by Toni, a stay-at-home-mom who has a fantastic recipe index filled with all sorts of delicious delights.

Some of Toni's recipes that sounded particularly good for this weekend included Caramel Apple Marshmallow Dip, Super Duper Hot Chocolate, Smokey Chipotle Chili, and Homemade Pumpkin Puree. But even though we always claim that we are not really into making desserts, it seems that something about the Secret Recipe Club brings out the bakers in us. For some of this year's SRC's, we've made Brownies with a Twist, Strawberry Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake, Meyer Lemon Bars, and Golden Cinnamon Buns, for example. This month, Toni's Soft and Chewy Gingersnaps sounded so easy and so yummy and so perfect for this time of year, we just went for it.

And they were both easy (done in about 1/2 hour, including baking time), and yummy (we got 42 cookies out of them and we each ate 4 or 5 straight out of the oven), and perfect for this time of year (our house smells amazing). We love Toni's suggestion of crumbling them over ice cream topped with caramel sauce. Doesn't that sound fabulous? 

Soft and Chewy Gingersnaps

recipe from Mommy's Menu

Ingredients:

3/4 cup vegetable shortening

1/4 cup molasses

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 1/4 cups flour, sifted

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

pinch ground cloves

1/4 cup granulated sugar 

Preheat oven to 375. Cream together the shortening, molasses, brown sugar and egg. Add the dry ingredients and mix together until well combined. Form into small balls and roll in granulated sugar. Place (staggered, as they will spread) onto a baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

UPDATE: Click here to see what was done with one of our recipes!

Onyx Moonshine Apple Cake

The other day, Amy's co-worker, also named Amy, brought it the most deliciously moist and tasty apple cake. Joanne (another self-professed foodie) pronounced it better than her mom's. (We're kind of hoping Mrs. K doesn't read our blog. If she does...sorry!) But anyway, yes, it was that good. Good enough for us to beg for the recipe, which Amy D. gave us tout de suite (she's a French teacher, so we owed her that)!

As luck would have it, our friends at Onyx had a tasting at the Coventry Farmers Market the other day, where they were sampling a delightful concoction of apples, cinnamon and brown sugar mixed with Onyx moonshine and apple cider. Then they offered us the leftover apples. Yeah...the boozy leftover apples. "Certainly the two of you could do make something with these!?!" they said. Hollah.

Yes, amidst this amazing planetary alignment (okay, maybe not that important) - we had the apples and the recipe, and as far as we were concerned, "Thunderbirds are go!" It was moonshine-apple-cake-baking-time!

We made Amy D's apple cake with those boozy apples and included the recipe below. Feel free to make it with plain old apples, if you must. But it won't be quite as good, just so you know. (wink wink)

Onyx Moonshine Apple Cake

Cake Ingredients:

5 medium apples, peeled and diced (feel free to soak them in Onyx Moonshine for a day or so, if you dare)

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

Topping: 

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine all cake ingredients in a large bowl, and toss to coat apples. Place in a 9X13 pan that has been greased with butter or sprayed with cooking spray. In a separate bowl, combine topping ingredients and pat over top before placing in oven. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until bubbly. If desired, dust with confectioner's sugar before serving.

Apple Crisp (Secret Recipe Club)

It's that time of year. Time to enjoy the fruits of Johnny Appleseed's labors. We went apple-picking, a friend of our went apple-picking and gave us some of hers, and we have lots and lots of apples to enjoy. We already made one delicious dessert with some of our apples, and thanks to Cara at The Boys Made Me Do It, we have made another!

Yes, it's Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day, and our assigned blog for this month was The Boys Made Me Do It. This blog has lots and lots of easy, fun, family-friendly recipes all blogged by Cara, mother to three boys. God bless her!

Because we were so flush with apples, we chose Cara's Apple Crisp, which she adapted from someone else in Secret Recipe Club. It was an amazingly easy recipe, all made with ingredients from our pantry. It only took about 15 minutes to prepare, plus an hour to bake. The house smelled sooo good while it was baking - apples, cinnamon, and autumn-ness. Love that smell!

The finished product was heavenly - cinnamon-y baked apples topped with a buttery crisp topping. Soft and crunchy, sweet and tart, everything a person could want in a dessert. Chris said he could have eaten the whole pan in one sitting. This one is a keeper!

Apple Crisp

Adapted slightly from Weekend Dessert by The Boys Made Me Do It

For the filling:

6 apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon apple pie spice

dash kosher salt

For the topping:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup oats

1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon apple pie spice

1/2 stick unsalted butter, chilled

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Place all of the sliced apples into a large mixing bowl and toss with lemon juice. Stir in the flour, sugar, apple pie spice and salt until all fruit is coated. Place the filling in a 9×9 pan or baking dish. In another bowl, mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, and apple pie spice. Cut in the butter and stir in until the mixture is full of small lumps. Sprinkle the topping over the apples. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour or until the apples are tender and the topping is browned.



CT Wine Trail: The Southeast Corner

A crisp and sunny fall Saturday just begged for a drive around Connecticut's wineries. So we grabbed our passports and headed to the southeast corner of the state to enjoy the scenery, sample a glass or two, and discover a place to grab a bite somewhere on the way home.

Our first stop was Holmberg Orchards and Winery. We made it the first stop so we could do some apple picking as well. The tasting room at Holmberg is quite small and it was crowded since everyone seemed to be copying our idea!!! They produce a few fruity wines, as well as some hard ciders, and for $5 (with a souvenir glass!) we got to taste three of each. Our favorite from the wines was the sweet-tart Apple Cranberry which had a beautfully dry cranberry finish. We also loved the zippy sparkling Cortland hard cider and took home a bottle of it to enjoy on our porch swing while we watch the leaves fall.

Next up was a stop at Dalice Elizabeth Winery, a small winery that imports grapes but do all the pressing, fermenting and aging here in CT. A tasting here costs $10 for 4 - the three wines they had available then a second tasting of your favorite. A glass is usually included, but unfortunately for us they had run out. Still, it was here that we enjoyed what may perhaps be the most unusual (in a good way!) wine we've ever had - a chardonnay with quite noticeable and long-lasting hints of almond flavor. Truly unique and delicious. They have cheese platters and other goodies for purchase, with cute little tables under a trellis and a pretty pond to view.

The third stop we made was to Stonington Vineyards. We had gotten a late start, so it was almost 4:30 when we arrived. They were having some live entertainment starting at 5 and had stopped their tastings, but offered us a glass of our choice of their wines and an invitation to stay for some music for $8 each. Amy went for the cabernet franc while Chris had the rose. Both were good enough but nothing we liked quite enough to buy more.

We had time for one more stop, only because one of the vineyards wisely stays open until 6, and that was our favorite of the day, Maugle Sierra Vineyards. The tasting room was warm and spacious, the server was gracious and welcoming, and the wines ($10 for a tasting of 6 wines - 3 whites, 3 reds - with souvenir glass) were fantastic. Several are made with the St. Croix grape, and the reds (particularly the Ledyard Sunset Red) went wonderfully with chocolate (yes, truffles are available for purchase).

Hungry now, we asked if there was an interesting restaurant nearby, and the fine folks at Maugle Sierra handed us a cork and pointed us in the direction of Valentino's, a casual Italian place that offered us a discount in exchange for the winery's cork - a nice little bonus, we thought! They seemed to specialize in pizza and grinders, but we went all out with a couple of pasta dishes. Satisfied and growing tired, we headed back home, having enjoyed a perfect fall outing.

 

FFwD: Crispy Crackly Apple Almond Tart

Last weekend, which was a long weekend, we spent Saturday taking a drive around the southeast corner of Connecticut, picking apples and visiting wineries. In other words, we had a perfect fall day. We'll tell you more about the wineries later, but as far as the apples go, we picked some big beautiful sweet-tart Winesaps and some deep dark maroon Macouns (considered by some to be the finest eating apple there is). Then we saw that this week's French Fridays with Dorie (in which we haven't been able to participate in some time) was "Crispy Crackly Apple Almond Tart," and we were totally psyched. How fortuitous!

The "French Fridays" Bible

A baking recipe, with a guardian angel for the baking-challenged.

Mise en place is fancy for "uncork the (French!) wine and let's get this recipe started"

Yes, it's fall, ya'll. And what says fall in New England better than apples? We have posted plenty of apple recipes over the years: recipes for doughnuts, pies (not one but two!), risotto, and other savory dishes (here and here), have featured apples and/or apple cider. But this fall, we were looking for something new, and Around My French Table (the book members of French Fridays with Dorie cooks from) had just what we needed.

Whisking together almond flour, sugar, egg, vanilla and heavy cream... 

...makes a heavenly almond cream topping for the tart.

Ooh la la - buttered and sugared sheets of phyllo dough!

After the cream is chilled...

it is carefully spread over the delicate phyllo.

While we can't give you the recipe (club rules!), we can tell you that it wasn't particularly difficult, even for the baking-challenged, and even with working with phyllo dough (which seems scary, doesn't it?). Dorie's direction are clear and straight-forward. We followed them strictly (except for using a different type of apple), and the finished product was incredible - both crispy and crackly, with a delightful balance of tart, juicy apple and sweet, nutty almond. The neighbors loved it, we loved it, and it made us that much more comfortable with baking and with using sheets of phyllo - that ever-versatile yet oh-so-elegant ingredient.  

Chris is a slicing wizard

Laying them perfectly over the almond cream.

It almost looks easy!

Some local apple maple jam makes a nice post-baking glaze.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: buy the book and start making the recipes. From what we can tell, there isn't a bad one in the bunch.