What do you do when you get back home from an afternoon of apple picking , open the doors to your apartment (or house) and realize that between the pounds of apples picked and sheer girth of the pumpkins you’ve purchased, you’ve got no counter space left in your kitchen?
Sure, you get a rush when you’re actually selecting and picking the apples in the beautifully vast orchard blanketed with crystal blue skies. However, when you’ve got the filled bags sitting in your kitchen, it’s a little overwhelming.
Hoping to put a serious dent in my recent apple quantity, I immediately went searching for a recipe in the MyJudytheFoodie binder. I wanted to find a recipe that’s quick and easy to make AND requires more than just a handful of apples – Mom’s Apple Crisp.
Feeling motivated, I also decided to make my other childhood favorite again: Apple Butter. The mixture of smells wafting from the oven as the fresh apple slices baked underneath the oat and brown sugar topping was mouth-watering. Combine those with the incense-like aroma from the slow cooking apples/sugar/cloves/cinnamon (yes folks that’s all apple butter contains) and you’ve got one heavenly smelling apartment/house.
Can you imagine my sheer pleasure as I programmed the cooker to slow cook for 10 more hours? There’s nothing more exciting than knowing that while you’re sleeping, something is still cooking, stewing, forming. I felt like a kid at Christmas time (or I imagined what it must feel like since I’m Jewish) when I entered the kitchen early morning to find the final apple butter product in the cooker. Within minutes my son was requesting some “butter” on his challah at breakfast.
I love that he felt so invested in this project. To think that he picked these apples with his bare hands from the trees just the day before must have been so cool for him. I must admit that spending over three hours peeling, cutting and coring apples has left me not wanting to look at another apple for a long time. Now, what to do with the entire bag full of apples still sitting on my kitchen floor?
Apple-slice eye masks anyone?
Judy’s Apple Crisp
Ingredients:
- 4 cups cored, peeled, sliced tart apples
- 3/4 cup brown sugar (packed)
- 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup oats
- 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup melted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Grease 8x8x2 square baking pan.
- Line bottom of pan with sliced apples.
- In medium bowl mix remaining ingredients thoroughly.
- Sprinkle mixture over apples to completely cover.
- Bake for 35 minutes or until top is golden brown.
- Best served warm, in a bowl, with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream.
- a chorus of apples awaiting its crisp
- A sea of baked apple crisp
All Day Apple Butter
(adapted from allrecipes.com)
Ingredients:
- 4-5 pounds of apples – peeled, cored and finely chopped
- 2-3 cups of white sugar (depending on amount of apples used)
- 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
Instructions:
- Place apples in a slow cooker.
- In a medium bowl, mix the sugar*, cinnamon, cloves and salt.
- Pour mixture over the apples in the slow cooker and mix well.
- Cover and cook on high 1 hour.
- Reduce the heat to low and cook an additional 10-11 hours. Stir occasionally until the mixture is thickened and brown.
- Uncover and continue cooking an extra 1.5 hours (or until consistency is much thicker).
- Spoon the mixture into jars or containers, cover, refrigerate or freeze.
- Enjoy!
* I would recommend cutting the sugar quantity in half. The apples alone have a lot of sugar and you don’t want to make the butter so sweet you can’t enjoy it!
- apple-butter-in-the-fridge
Have any favorite fall harvest activities? What are your favorite apple-based dishes?
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