Apple Season

It's apple season!    Here are a few things we are doing and have done with apples.   I hope you get a chance to try a few of them.

Apple Pie Filling
Apple Pear Pie Filling
Apple Slices - canned
Apple Dumplings
Apple Tart
April's Apple Slices [Slab Pie]
Green Tomato/Apple Crisp 
Apple Pear Maple Jam
Autumn Berry [Autumn Olive/Elaeagnus] Apple Jam




One bushel of apples makes about 21 quarts of apple pie filling or canned apple slices.   I've got one bushel done [pie filling] and one more coming [canned apple slices].   Our pantry is overloaded this year, which is both a blessing and a curse.   I'm focusing on the blessing part. 

Berry Rhubarb Crisp

Last year we cut and froze a lot of rhubarb.    First time ever!    Just recently, we realized how much we had in the freezer and we decided to start using it up.    We love the traditional strawberry-rhubarb combinations, but since our strawberries have already been used, we decided to try other combinations with rhubarb.

Turns out that Blueberry-Rhubarb and Blackberry-Rhubarb are just as good as [if not better than] the strawberry version.

Lily made a couple of crisps so we could do the tasting.   Delish!

Berry Rhubarb Crisp
www.rurification.com

2 cups blueberries or blackberries or strawberries
3 cups rhubarb
1/2 cup sugar  [3/4 cup if you know your fruit is tart.]

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter an 8 x 8 baking dish.  Toss the fruit with the sugar and put in baking dish.  Sprinkle all over with topping.  Bake for 50 minutes or until browned and bubbling.

Crisp Topping
www.rurification.com

1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup flour
1/2 sugar
1 cup oats

Cut together well with pastry blender or food processor. 

Notes:  We use this crisp topping on a lot of different things.   You can use white or whole wheat flour.  You can use regular or old fashioned rolled oats.   It's good with white or brown sugar.  

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.

Pear Plum Crisp

First of all, let me be clear.   I believe in dessert for breakfast.   Especially fruit stuff.  Fruit desserts are much easier to rationalize for breakfast than, say, chocolate cake.

So we have a lot of pies and crisps for breakfast. 

Crisps are easy because all you have to do is cut up the fruit, sprinkle on some sugar if you need it and toss on a topping.   Easy squeezy.

We had a few plums in the fridge that needed to be eaten, but there were only five of them.   I cut them up anyway but I needed something else to add to it.  A can of pears!

And we have a jar of tapioca granules that I picked up at Freedom Country Store, just north of Worthington.  Tapioca granules make good thickener.

This is what I did:

Pear-Plum Crisp

• 1 can pears [29 oz.] in heavy syrup
• 5 plums, cut up and seeded
• 2 Tablespoons tapioca granules [or flakes]

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease the bottom of an 8x8 pan or casserole dish.   Put plums in the bottom of the dish.    Open the can of pears and put a few of the pears on the plums, leaving the syrup.   Stir the tapioca granules into the syrup and pour over the fruit.    Sprinkle on the crisp topping.  Bake for 50 minutes or until bubbling and browned.   Serves 9.

Crisp Topping

• 1/4 C sugar
• 1/2 C flour
• 1/2 C oats
• 1/4 C butter
• dash cinnamon
• dash salt

Mix everything together with a pastry blender or food processor.  I always use the pastry blender.  Eric always uses the food processor.   I told him it's a guy/power tool thing.  He told me it's a 20th century kind of thing and since we're now in the 21st century, I'd better catch up.

Whatever.

If you use the pastry blender, leave the oats out until everything else is chopped up nicely.   Then stir in the oats.   Eric says if you just use the food processor, you don't have to remember to leave the oats out.  You can just toss it all in.

He's got a point. 


Note:  Even with the 2 Tablespoons of tapioca, it could still have been a bit thicker.   If you want thick, then bump up the tapioca to 3 Tablespoons instead of two.