Day 295: Slow Cooker Apples

I made baked apples last week and even though they were good the recipe does need some fudging. This is the recipe that I more or less followed.

I added quick oats, tons more cinnamon, craisins and some chopped pecans I had on hand. As you can see in the photo, I forgot to add the cinnamon to the mixture, so I had to throw it on top of the apples.

The hubster and I felt that the quick oats (although tasty) sucked up the brown sugar and the sweetness from the apples. I tried to follow the quantities listed plus adding the extras and it barely filled four apples. Maybe I bored the centers too deep, but if you try the recipe I will advise you to make a little extra.

We served our baked apples warm with some vanilla ice cream that we found in our deep freezer. It was a pretty good dessert, but I feel like our apples from last fall would have been much tastier. Maybe if we get more sweet apples from our trees I will try this recipe again.

Do you have a favorite baked apple recipe?
I have had them when they were baked with red hots candy. If you like cinnamon and sweetness then it would be a good choice for you.

Day 184: Snow White Pie

Please notice my beautiful lattice crust. Kit helped me.

Okay, this blog has very little to do with Snow White except the fact that she does not abide by even the most lax of health standards while baking apple pie from scratch.

There are no bird feet nor droppings in my pie!

We found an apple tree on our property and Kit believes it might be a wine sap variety.
Red peel, sweet and wonderful to bake with too!

I have a ton more apples I need to put up and freeze. This has been an awesome year for apples!

How did it do after baking?

Perfectly!!
The original recipe said to bake it for an hour on 375, which was way too high.

It tasted even better than it looks. I made another apple pie (not quite as pretty) right afterwords because Kit loved it so much. There is one piece left in the fridge.

I have written down and will keep this pie recipe for sure.

I did use coconut oil for the crusts. It worked very well because it was partially solidified. This is definitely key, much like butter or lard having this element cool or cold will make for a more malleable crust.

Day 141: Apple Harvest

This year Kit and I were shocked to are see not only the abundance but the sheer size of the baking apples on our tree in the backyard. I am not sure the variety but perhaps double the size of a crabapple….at least normally.

This year it looked like fat, juicy peaches were hanging from the apple tree. So, we got to work picking what we could and dodging the bumble bees that were cleaning up the rotten apples.

Our first attempt at apple cider ended in apple sauce. I’m not a bit worries about that fact. For one, the entire house smelled like spiced apples just from them boiling–heaven.
We didn’t have to add any spices or sugar to the applesauce as the end result was sweet and had a beautiful applebutter color.

Our second attempt at making cider was much more successful. The picture is me trying to cool off my hot cider before gulping it down. I could have drank down the entire pot. We ended up with three quarts of cider. Next time we might strain it twice to get rid of more sediments but it will be awesome this fall.

At Thanksgiving I usually mix up some wassail using cider and stick it in a crock pot for my family to enjoy. Anyone need a banging wassail recipe?