apple sauce

I have made, what, four apple cakes, and none of them have turned out.

Sigh.

But I still had a bunch of apples, so I pulled out Baby Cakes again, determined that perhaps this one last time, something from their cookbook would turn out the way I expected.

Cartoonist saw the book, and said, no, you are not going to make another apple cake, and you are not going to do it from Baby Cakes.

OK, I said, the continued, getting the apples ready to roast.

But as I read the recipe, I realized that I really just wanted to make apple sauce, and not from that book, but from the Jewish Holiday Treats, which is much easier, and I have done many times before.

• Cut up the apples
• put in water
• put in some sugar
• put in some cinnamon

Sorry to be so vague here, but I always wing it when I make it. I use up about four to six apples, but could be more, depending on their size. Sometimes I throw in pears.

Funny thing, was, when it was done, Cartoonist tried it on the apple cake I had made the other day, and said it worked, that perhaps that was one of the things it was missing.

Cutting up the apples

Yes I am still trying to find a way to get through all the apples that we have been getting from our CSA. Come winter, we will miss them, but for now, we just want to use them before they all go bad.

And I am being stubborn. I know there must be a good apple cake recipe out there.

One of the books I got when I was going while at the book shop was Perfect Cakes.  And, I am stubborn, because I keep thinking I can make a good cake without gluten, which I am sure I can.

Cartoonist mixing the mix

I should have known something was wrong when Cartoonist was having trouble stirring the mix. She tried a spoon, and a beater, and finally resorted to using her hands. I took a look and said, perhaps I should add another egg, which I did, and it didn’t’ make any difference, it was still like stirring mud.

Of course, it didn’t help that about half-way through the recipe I realized I wasn’t going to do it the way that the book was suggesting. Oh, I was doing the 3 pounds of apples, but I wasn’t going to grade the cake mixture through a box grater over the apples. Perhaps it woudl have turned out better, but maybe next time.

Instead, I just mixed up the ingredients, and popped it int he over.

• 4 cups of flour (I believe we used a mixture of whatever flours we had left, gluten free of course)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup of raw sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

After mixing it all together we baked it for about an hour at 350F.

The finished cake

The cake didn’t taste bad, it was just very dense. It had a pleasant enough taste, so I think if I were to do this one again, I would either put in more eggs, or more apple sauce, or try xyanth gum, although I haven’t had much luck with that one.

using up apples

It all started when we got more apples in the basket this week. We found a recipe for Apple and Cheddar Souffle in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and thought, great, we’ll make that. Never mind that we had been making all our souffles from the Julia Child cookbook, and they had turned out quite well. Never mind all that. We decided that this was it, and we would use up more apples, and that would be great.

goat milk

We also thought it would be a good time to use Goat Milk, which I had been wanting to do for some time. So here is the recipe. Perhaps it will work for others, but certainly didn’t for us.

• 2 cups of milk (we used goat milk)
• 2 tbs butter
• 6 tbs rice flour
• 6 eggs separated
• 1 cup grated cheddar
• 2 cups grated apples
• a bit of nutmet
• 3/4 tsp salt

It wasn’t like we didn’t follow the direction, because we did.

finished

But, it didnt’ rise, and it didn’t sink when we got it out. And it didn’t taste quite right, even when cooled, so this was one that we just tossed out, when we had finished tasting it.

soup in the blender

Once I got the mix off the pot, I had to blend it again, with the apple sauce I had made the other day.

Problem was that it was quite hot, so I couldn’t just reach my hand in and move things around, not that I didn’t try, and keep discovering how hot the mixture was. It was supposed to be soup like, but it never got much thinner, no matter how much I mixed it in the blender.

Finally, I decided it was as mixed and as blended as it was going to be, so I poured it into a bowl, and stuck it in the fridge for four hours, which is what the recipe called for.

Cartoonist said, what? Four hours? She was hoping to eat it that night, but we couldn’t do that. It was already late, and I didn’t want to stay up any longer.

Finished soup

The next day, when it came time to taste the soup, we finally added the sparkling cider, and we both said it didn’t taste like soup, but rather really reach apple sauce.

I let my book keeper taste it, and she said it tasted really good, and wrote down the recipe, but I explained what we had changed, and said she might find hers would turn out more soup like than ours did, especially if she used apple juice, rather than the apple mush like things we used.

So now, we can use this for apple sauce on the next thing we make.

Mixing the apples to make apple juice

We decided, because of the weather, to make Chilled Apple and Carrot Soup. We had most of the ingredients, and those we didn’t have, that we didn’t get, were just those for the garnish, which we weren’t too worried about.

Two things the recipe called for were apple sauce and apple juice, both of which I figured I could make. Well, I had made the apple sauce the week before, so didn’t have to buy that, and we had made apple juice by accident before, so figured it wouldn’t be to hard to make on purpose.

I found the best way to get it to work in the blender was to first grind it up int he the mini-food processor. That worked ok, but seemed to be an extra step, and I would get frustrated, and try to make it go faster, which it didn’t want to do.

cutting up carrots

Meanwhile, Cartoonist was cutting up the other ingredients.. She cut up the 4 apples, and the 3 large carrots, and the 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest (which was about one lemon) and the juice of the lemon, while I was still grinding up the apples.  Once I had the apple juice sort of ready, we added it all together to simmer.

The sachet in the pot

We had gone to the store to buy clove and stick of cinnamon for the sachet, but hadn’t thought what I would put it in. I had not bought cheese clothe. So I took a napkin, and tied it up in that, and that seemed to work just fine. I have never used a sachet before, but liked how it gave a nice flavor to the mixture, without having to fish it out when it was all done.

Cartoonist kept worrying that the clothe was going to catch fire. I told her it wouldn’t, and it didn’t.

Once everything was cooked, we were thinking it would be all done, but no, there was going to be more to making this soup.

Here is what the recipe was:

• 5 apples, peels and cored and cubed
• 3 large carrots, peeled, and cubed
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest.
• 2 cups of apple juice
• 1/2 cup of apple sauce

The sachet had

• 1 small stick cinnamon
• 1 close
• 1 sprig fresh thyme

Another apple cake, in the oven

On of the first things Cartoonist and I wanted to do was to bake something from the Savor cook book, which we had picked up on the cruise. We looked and looked, remembering how things tasted, and decided ont he Low-Fat Apple cake.

We didn’t have the ingredients for the Coulis sauce, nor for the glaze, but we had most of the stuff for the cake, so decided to go after that.

The recipe called for

• one pastry sheet, but we didn’t want that, so didn’t use it.
• 3 eggs (but we only had two duck eggs left)
• 1 1/2 cups for  brown sugar, but we like raw sugar so used that.
• 1 1/2 cups of canola oil, but we didn’t have that so use olive oil
• 2 cups of whole wheat flour (but we used coconut and brown rice flour
• 1 cup of hazelnut flour (but we used ground almond meal instead)
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda (which we did have)
• 5 granny smith apples peeled, cored and quartered (which we didn’t have, so I just used whatever apples we did have.

and out of the oven

With all that, is it a wonder that when we mixed it up it seemed to not have enough liquid. I should have put apples sauce in it, but didn’t. It went in as hard as it came out. We decided that it tasted like apple flavored sand, and after eating a few of the apples on top, I threw the whole thing in  the trash, without even saving some for the raccoons and the compost bin.

apples cooking

I was at a loss. I had baked and cooked, and couldn’t figure out what else to do. I lamented to my sweetie, when she called, that I still had all these apples left, and I didn’t want them to go bad.

Why don’t you make apple sauce? she asked. That is what you usually do when you want to use up apples.

Ah, of course, and it was the simplest recipe in the world. I had gotten if from the Jewish Holiday Treats recipe book. I make it for Passover every year, because it tastes so good with latkas. It is called  Kids’ Applesauce, probably because it is so easy.  It takes 2 pounds of apples, which is, I don’t know, about seven of them, 1/2 cup of water, 3 tablespoons of sugar and juice of one lemon. I usually add a tablespoon of cinnamon. Throw all that into a pot and cover and  simmer over low heat.

Once the apples are soft, which takes a half an hour or so, although I am usually doing something else in the kitchen, so I don’t really time it, I just go by the smell and the sound. Anyway, once it they are soft, you turn off the flame, and take a potato masher, and mush them up. I suppose i could use a food mill, but when I started making these, I didn’t have a food mill.

Applesauce done

Once it is done you can eat it or store it, so store it I did. It make the whole kitchen smell so good, and I could still smell it in the morning when I got up. Too bad I didn’t have any latkes to eat it with.

apples in pie shell

As I said, I love the Moosewood Cookbook. The recipe for Apple Custard Pie was easy to follow and tasted great. Cartoonist said this was one we had to make again.

This called for 2 cups of peeled and sliced apples, put in to a pie crust.  I am really bad at making  pie crusts. They just down’t want to roll out. I made a simple cold water crust, which is flour butter and water. I used white rice flour.  I tried rolling it out three or four times, and finally just put it in the pie shell and pushed it down with my fingers. Sigh.

Then Cartoonist put the apple slices in, and then we mixed up the 4 eggs, 1/4 cup of raw sugar, 1 cup of yogurt, 1 tsp of vanilla, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and 1/4 tsp of salt, all mixed up in the blender, until frawthy.

Custard and apple in pie shell

Cartoonist poured the custard into the pie shell and we put it in the oven for 45 minutes at 375F. We had no idea if it was going to turn out, but Cartoonist made sure to tast it before it went in the over, to make sure it at least had a fighting chance of being good.

Finsihed Apple Custard Pie

When we took the pie out, the crust could have browned a little more, but the whole pied tasted so good, we couldn’t wait until it cooled off to sample it. We are now adding that to the list of things we want to try to make again, and improve on. (One thing I’ve got to learn to do is make a better pie crust). I used rice flour and coconut again.

Mixing the apples

I love the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, as well as The  Moosewood Cookbook. I have not been let down by anything I have cooked from there, so I turned to these two books for what I made next. I found an Apple Bread that didn’t look bad, or too hard, so I set to it.

First, I chopped up the apples in the mini-Cuisinart. Then I added the ride and juice of one lemon.  The recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of packed apples. That only made a small dent in my mound of apples, but a dent it made. Next I added 1/2 cup of raw sugar, 4 tablespoons of melted butter and 1 egg. Then I mixed the dry ingredients which were 2 cups of rice flour, 2 1/2 tsp of baking power, 1/2 tsp baking soda, a dash of salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Finsihed Bread

I popped it in the over for about an hour, and it came out tasting quite good.

Cartoonist took it to o the art center the next day, and it was gobbled up.

Still have apples

I still had plenty of apples, so the next recipe I decided to make was one from the newspaper, and I decided to alter it as much as I wanted…and yes, I knew that was a bad idea, but oh well. I not only wanted to use up apples, but the plums I had, and some of the blueberries. Oh, I was going to make the best cake.

I cut up two cups worth of apples, and dropped them in the food processor, along with some blueberries that had started to change color,and the plums that were going soft. It made a dirty purple color that looked a bit like cement, but I figured it would taste good, at some point.

Cement Apple Cake

I used one cup of raw sugar, 2 eggs, some bananas that had started to go bad, one cube of melted butter, 1 cup of coconut flour and 1/2 cup of gluten-free, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Finished cake

It looked dreadful going in, so I cut up another banana and another apple, and put it on top, thinking it would make it better. The recipe called to cook it at 350 for half an hour.

It was not done in half an hour. It was not done in an hour. It was still soggy and horrid, and after an hour of cooking, it came out looking like this. So I let it cool, and didn’t even bother to put it in the compost, just dumped it in the trash.

Failure in the kitchen number 2.