Apple Slices

So I was telling you that I made a bunch of apple pie filling, but I ran out of the Perma Flo long before I ran out of apples.   There were a lot of apples left over.  A veritable Everest of apple slices.

So.  

Yeah.   

I could have made pie filling to freeze [Choose your favorite recipe, put the dried stuff in the sliced apples, toss and put in freezer bags in the freezer.  Easy squeezy.]    

But I'm trying to can more and freeze less.  

So I took that mountain of apple slices and canned them plain.   Just jars of apple slices.    Since this was a first time for me, I went to the National Center for Home Food Preservation and mostly did it their way.     I used vitamin C tablets to keep the the apples from browning [same way I do peaches.] and I put them in a light syrup.  

A word about syrup.    The reason that fruit is canned in syrup is not that food companies want you to eat more sugar.    It is that the sugar helps stabilize the cell structure of the fruit and keep it firm and not mushy.   It helps keep fruit beautiful.  And those companies know that you are much more likely to buy pretty food than mushy shreddy food, so they keep it beautiful.

I've canned fruit both ways. Sugarless fruit loses its shape and looks ragged pretty fast.  This time I did not want applesauce, so I used a light syrup to keep the apple slices as slices in the jar.   [You could even use a very light syrup.]

Those apple slices are fabulous!   We loved them in our favorite coffee cake base.    We used the same cake that's in the pumpkin cream cheese coffee cake recipe and left out the cream cheese and pumpkin.   Use the apple juice from the jar to replace the milk.   Add the apples by either dumping them in the batter and mixing them in entirely  - OR, you can put them on top of the batter in the pan and swirl them around a bit before baking.   Either way, YUM!

Lemon Upside-Down Cake

You know I had those Meyer lemons I told you about a few days ago, and I've been looking for something really tasty to make with them so I did a search and found a recipe for Lemon Upside Down Cake.

Hello, Gorgeous!

I tweaked the recipe a bit and my, oh my, was it delicious.   Sweet and sour with some smooth vanilla accents. 

We assembled and baked this in a cast iron pan, but if you don't have one, don't worry, you can use a large round cake pan or pie plate just as well.

Lemon Upside-Down Cake
www.rurification.com 
adapted from the recipe in the L.A. Times 7/16/13

• 2-3 lemons (I used three and that was quite a lot.]
• One-half cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) butter, divided
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 vanilla bean, split
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk

Cut the ends off the lemons, then slice them into very thin rounds. Remove seeds and set aside. Grate 1 teaspoon lemon peel from the lemon ends. Set aside the grated peel.

Melt four tablespoons of the butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet. Brush the sides of skillet with a little of the melted butter. Add the brown sugar, stir it into the butter and spread it into an even layer.  It'll look grainy - that's OK.  Put the prettiest lemon slice smack dab in the center.  Arrange the rest of the lemon slices in overlapping circles to cover the bottom of the skillet.  Let the lemons and sugar continue to heat on low while you mix everything else up.   Keep an eye on it so the sugar doesn't start to burn.  [If you're using a regular cake or pie pan, then pre-heat the oven and melt the butter in the pan the oven.  Take it out to put the sugar and lemon slices in, then stick it back in the oven while you make the rest of the batter.]

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside.

Cut up the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter into a mixing bowl. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean with the point of a knife onto the butter. I scraped them off the knife right onto the ends of the beaters on my mixer.  Beat the butter, scraping down the sides of the bowl, until creamy. Add the sugar and grated lemon peel and beat until light and fluffy.  This took me at least 5 minutes. When you can't stand it anymore, beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Once you've got the eggs in, things will get very light and fluffy.  Add half the flour mixture and beat until blended.  Add the milk and beat until blended, then add the remaining flour mixture and beat until blended.

Spread the batter by the spoonful over the lemons in the skillet to cover evenly. Then smooth it down neatly.   Bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cake is golden and the center tests done. Let the cake stand 5 minutes, then invert the skillet onto a platter. [It took two of us to do this.  We used a very large, flat platter.]  It will be oozy while hot, but will soak up some of the goo as it cools.  I spooned the rest of the goo still in the skillet over the inverted cake.  

Serving this is tricky - it's hard to cut through the lemon slices neatly.  If you want something that serves beautifully, then consider cutting the lemon slices in half moons before you start and arranging them so that they'll be easy to cut along when the cake is finished. 


I served this with a dollop of creme fraiche and was in lemon heaven.   Be warned! -- It's hard to stop with just one piece.  Or two.   Hide it from yourself if you don't want to eat it all at one sitting.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Coffeecake

Last fall we canned some pumpkin and it has been fantastic!  I pulled out a quart this week and asked Lily what we should make that wasn't too pumpkin-pie-ish.   This is what she came up with.   It was wonderful.    Seriously wonderful.

Basically it's three parts:  pumpkin, ginger spiced cake, and cream cheese chunks - all swirled together and baked.   Yum!

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Coffeecake 
www.rurification.com

1/2 cup butter
1 1/3 cup sugar

2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp powdered ginger
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 8oz pkg cream cheese cut into small cubes
1 quart canned pumpkin

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375. Grease 9x13 pan.

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs.  Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and spices in separate bowl and gradually add to the butter/egg mixture alternating with the milk. Begin and end with the flour mix.   Pour the pumpkin into the bottom of the prepared pan. Fold the cream cheese into the batter and pour on top of the pumpkin. Swirl with a knife to marble the two.

Bake for 60 minutes or until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Cherry Pie Filling Experiments with Perma Flo

My blackberry pie filling [see yesterday's post] was so easy and so successful that I immediately started making plans to use up some of the fruit in the freezer in shelf stable canned pie filling.   Seriously, the freezer was so full the kids were starting to threaten me any time I talked about getting more fresh fruit.

Mom.  MOM!  There's no room in the freezer.

NO ROOM.   None.   It's full to bursting.   Really.

So I told them to pull out 4 bags of cherries and I'd make cherry pie filling with a gallon of cherries I just got from Freedom Country Store the same way I'd made pie filling with a gallon of blackberries.

I did exactly the same thing only used twice as much sugar since they were sour cherries.  It didn't go as well as I thought.

Cherry Pie Filling Syrup with Perma Flo
www.rurification.com

1 gallon frozen cherries
3 quarts water
1 cup rounded Perma Flo
6 cups sugar  

Step 1.  Bring the liquid to a boil.   I put 3 quarts of water in a pot and 1 quart of the cherries and brought that to a boil.   I mashed the cherries while I was at it to release the juices.

Step 2.  Whisk in the Perma Flo.   I used 1/4 cup per quart of fruit.   1 gallon of cherries needed 1 cup of Perma Flo. I rounded the cup. 

Step 3.  Stir until it starts to thicken.  It took a few minutes.

Step 4.  Add fruit [the rest of the gallon of cherries], sugar [6 cups] and return to boil.

Step 5.  Put in clean jars, wipe rims, top with clean lids and rings.

Step 6.  Process jars for 30 minutes.  The NCHFP recommends water bath canning.


I ended up with 7 quarts of thin pie filling.

In jars that were only 1/2 full of cherries.

Soooo, this batch of pie filling is not exactly my idea of a paragon of success.   [I used paragon to describe pie filling again.  How. Cool. Is. That?]

Apparently there is a lot more juice in frozen cherries than there is in fresh blackberries. I figured I'd have to open the jars and monkey with it to get it thicker, but I didn't want to because those cherries had clearly had enough.  Plus, it was hot.   Plus, I just didn't want to monkey with it any more.

Once the jars cooled, they thickened up just enough to be a nice syrup and I realized that sour cherry syrup is a great thing to have.

We served it over chocolate cake and ice cream.   To. Die. For.

Then the next day, I cut up 4 nice big fresh peaches into a greased casserole dish and poured a quart of the cherry syrup-pie-filling-goo over them and topped it with some fruit crisp topping and baked it all until brown and bubbling.

We had that for breakfast.  Because I'm the best mom in the world.  They told me so. 

So, proceeding with a positive attitude and a little creativity, I was able to snatch culinary victory out of the jaws of certain food preservation defeat.    Hah!

My point is, don't despair when your experiments turn out weird.  If they taste good [and this will!] and give you an opportunity to discover something new that you and your family will love.

In the meantime, if you want to actually make regular thick cherry pie filling with Perma Flo this is what I'd do:

Cherry Pie Filling with Perma Flo - the hypothetical version
www.rurification.com

1 gallon frozen cherries
1 quart water
1 rounded cup Perma Flo
6 cups sugar  

Step 1.  Bring the liquid to a boil. If you defrost the cherries completely before you start, then just use that juice and skip the water.

Step 2.  Whisk in the Perma Flo. 

Step 3.  Stir until it starts to thicken.  It takes a few minutes.

Step 4.  Add fruit and sugar and return to boil.

Step 5.  Put in clean jars, wipe rims, top with clean lids and rings.

Step 6.  Process jars for 30 minutes.  The NCHFP recommends water bath canning.

Yield:  5 quarts of cherry pie filling. Ish.

Muffin Jam Cake

Here's another great recipe in our TTDWAJOJ [Things to Do with a Jar of Jam] series.  And it's simple.

Pull out your favorite muffin recipe and make up the batter.

Layer half of the batter in a cake pan.

Spread a jar of jam over it.  [You might have to stir the jam well to thin it out enough to pour/spread easily.] If you have some jam that didn't gel completely, this is a great way to use it.

Spread on the rest of the batter.

Sprinkle with chopped nuts and honey or your favorite coffee cake or fruit crisp topping.

Bake at 350 until done - 35-45 minutes depending on your pan size. 

We made this one with an oatmeal muffin recipe and put cherry vanilla jam in the middle with finely chopped almonds and honey on the top.  Mmmmm.

Honey Banana Muffins

As we now have bees and will eventually have honey, I've been keeping my eyes open for honey recipes. A while ago I saw this recipe for Honey Cake in the Penzey's catalog.   I was intrigued.  So I tried it.  It was good.

But kind of heavy on the cardamom.

And even though it was a honey cake, it had sugar in it, too.   Which means that honey was a flavoring more than the sweetening.  If you know what I mean.

And saffron is really pretty, but not so pretty that I need to waste it on a cake that was going to turn yellow anyway from the honey and the eggs.

So I decided to make a couple of changes.

A little less cardamom.

Skip the saffron.

No sugar.    So maybe add a banana?

And vanilla.

And yogurt. 

And make muffins instead of a cake. 

And it was good.   The heavens opened and the angels sang halleluias. 

You need to make some.   Today.

Honey Banana Muffins

• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup honey
• 1 ripe banana
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup yogurt
• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 T baking powder

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter and honey.   Add the banana and eggs.  Mix well.   Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.  Add slowly to the wet ingredients until incorporated.

Bake in papers or greased cupcake pan for 28 minutes.  As soon as you put them in the oven, lower the temp to 325.  It makes taller muffins.   Really.   I tried it. 

Yield:  24 muffins.

Now, I think I need to try it with a  streusel topping.   Sounds really good, huh.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Our zucchini was kaput this year.    It suffered an early attack by vine borers and it never recovered.   It's still making a valiant effort, but I'm only seeing male flowers.    Kinda pathetic, but I just can't bring myself to pull it up.   I've got a month until frost [fingers crossed] and it might produce some yet.    In the meantime, I'm eating zucchini from the bounty of others.    Thank you all!  

My kids had never had zucchini cake, so I decided to make one, but with chocolate. 

OK, I know you've seen these recipes before and you're probably rolling your eyes - another zucchini cake recipe - blah, blah, blah - but this recipe is remarkably fudgy.

Yes, you read that right.  

Fudgy.   Moist and dark and delicious.   So much so that I'm going to change the name right now to Fudgy Chocolate Zucchini Cake. 

Now that you've seen this fabulous picture, you're going to want to make one yourself with your own zucchini bounty.   I'll try not to be jealous.


Fudgy Chocolate Zucchini Cake 

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup sour cream, yogurt or buttermilk
• 3/4 cup oil
• 3 cups grated zucchini [1 good sized zucchini]
• 1 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven 350 degrees.  Grease and flour 9x11 inch pan.   Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well - you don't want globs of baking soda in your finished cake, trust me.    Beat eggs.   Add eggs, sour cream and oil.    Mix well.    Fold in nuts and zucchini until well mixed.   Bake for 50-60 minutes.   Don't over bake - you want to keep it moist.  

The kids loved this.   We ate it for breakfast.   With homemade whipped cream. 

I'm thinking it would be so so good with dark chocolate icing.    Or cream cheese icing.   Or just with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.