Apple Strudel Muffins

Okay, so I really think this is the LAST apple recipe I post this fall. I had so much fun (and so much delicious food!) using up all our apple from our apple picking trip.
Any who, the final recipe is Apple Strudel Muffins. The original recipe can be found here, via Life Of Faith. As usual, I made a few tweaks.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour (I used half white and half wheat)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons wheat germ (optional)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups chopped apples (for me, this was about 6 apples since all I had left were some teeny tiny Macoun apples)

I actually made the muffins identical to her recipe (even including the optional wheat germ). But the strudel topping was my own creation.

Topping Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter (for this I do use unsalted stick butter, not a spread or margarine)1 tablespoon flour
1/4 cup baking oats
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
1/3 cup brown sugar

Preheat your oven to 350F.
Start by combining your flour, baking soda and powder, salt, and wheat germ. Mix thoroughly and set aside. (I forgot to photo that this time, but I’m pretty sure you can get by without it.)

Next, chop up your apples into teeny tiny cubes.

After the apples are all set, in a larger bowl cream your butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla together.

Pour in your dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Oops, I lied before – I did deviate slightly from the original muffin recipe. Once my wet and dry ingredients were combined, I added in some milk (I didn’t measure, but I’d say not more than 1/8 cup). I found the batter to be very dry and thick – the milk did the trick.

Then add in your chopped apples and combine thoroughly.

I dough scooped mine into my silicon cupcake holders (yay for no waste and money saving!) but you can just use a spoon too. Fill them 2/3 full. Then, it’s time to make your topping. Combine all the topping ingredients in a bowl and mash together by hand until crumbly. Once crumbly, sprinkle about a half tablespoon on top of each muffin.

Bake 20 – 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center. Let cool for 5-10 minutes and enjoy!

These are seriously SO DELICIOUS! I mean, I wasn’t expecting them to NOT be good, but I was blown away at the flavor they pack. It’s like apple pie in muffin form. A cup of tea and one of these makes me a happy gal!

And in case you missed them, here are my other apple recipes from this year:
Apple Crisp
Apple Fritters
Apple Butter

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Apple Butter

Another apple recipe post! This time, some yummy apple butter.

When I was thinking about all the apple goodness I could make after apple picking, apple butter had never crossed my mind. But at the orchard they had samples of their own to try – and I would say it was one of the yummiest things I’ve eaten recently! Naturally, I wanted to try and make my own. I browsed some recipes online, which pretty much all consisted of the same four or five ingredients. So as usual, I tossed the recipes aside and made up my own! My recipe is below – definitely tweak it for your own tastes!

Ingredients:

• Apples – enough to fill a crock pot 3/4 full once peeled and sliced. For me, this was 10 apples. (I used a mix of Macintosh, Macoun, and Cortland.)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp apple pie spice
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup apple cider

First, peel and slice your apples, and toss then in the crock pot.

Then add in your spices and sugar.

Pour in the apple cider, and stir everything together until the apples are fully coated.

Cover and cook on high for 1 – 2 hours, then turn down to low for 8 -10 hours. Stir periodically to keep things from sticking to the sides. After cooking in the crock pot you’ll end up with a brown mushy goo! Pour that into a blender and pulse a few times until it’s a nice creamy consistency. If you have an immersion blender, that would be MUCH easier – just blend it all right in the crock pot!

Then pour the butter into your jars (or whatever storage container you are using). I used mason jars, and canned them. Sealing the jars is really easy – just put the jars in a boiling water bath for about 10 – 15 minutes and you’re done! Now I have plenty to save to give as gifts – maybe with some zucchini or spice bread.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying some on an English Muffin for breakfast with a cup of tea. YUM! I think next time I’ll do a little less spice, and maybe a quarter cup more brown sugar – what can I say, I’ve got a sweet tooth!

Until next time,

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Apple Fritters

Apple recipe number two!

I have never made apple fritters before, and it is very rare that I fry things since A: it’s not particularly healthy, and B: I’m lazy, and frying is a lot of effort and cleanup I don’t like dealing with! Mostly B. . . But occasionally I’ll tryout a recipe that involves it, and this year it was these fritters.

You can find the recipe here via Use Real Butter (which I think is a fabulous blog name!) This particular recipe is very involved. It was fun to do, and would be great to make for many people, but it is certainly one of those recipes I would make once a year at most. And for this one, I followed the recipe word for word – a rarity in baking for me but this was a foreign territory! I’m not going to rewrite the whole thing here, so if you’d like to give these a shot click the link above and follow the recipe!

First you mix up the batter, which sits aside and sets for awhile.

In the meantime, you prep your apples for frying. I discovered I am terrible at cutting apples with the same thickness! Luckily, it doesn’t affect the outcome terribly. Also, I had some halves because I kept snapping my apple rings – oops! But they fried up just fine.

Then comes the battering and frying, which is actually not hard, just a bit messy on the fingers. Also, I broke my candy thermometer awhile back and never replaced it, so I had to completely guess on my oil temperature!

Once finished, I liberally sprinkled on some confectioner sugar and chowed down! They were a great combo of doughnut-like outside and gooey apple inside. . .YUM!

So as stated above, these are certainly something I wouldn’t make often. It uses so many dishes, is time consuming and isn’t at all toddler-friendly, so it’s just not too conducive to my current lifestyle. But they were tasty, that’s for sure!

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Apple Crisp

The first of my many apple recipe posts just had to be apple crisp. It is my absolute favorite apple dessert. A thick crust of brown sugary oatmeal goodness on top of a baked bed of cinnamon apples. . .just to die for.

I don’t actually use a recipe when I make apple crisp – all the ones I’ve tried never end up with enough topping for my tastes. I like a THICK amount of it, not just a smidge on top of the apples. So the recipe here is a rough idea of what I use, but mine varies from batch to batch. Feel free to play with it so it’s adjusted to your tastes!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups baking oats
1/2 cup butter
5 small to medium size apples (I used Macintosh for this particular batch.)
Lemon juice

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Start by combining your flour, sugar, and oats. Mix thoroughly – I do all this by hand instead of with a spoon as I find it mixes better overall.

Then add in your butter, and mix up. Again, I do this by hand as I find that creates a better texture for the topping (I do use a spoon to scrape down the sides however). Once combined, set aside.

Now it’s time to peel and slice your apples. My mom got me this Pampered Chef all in one Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer and it makes every apple-baking project about 500% more efficient than hand cutting and peeling your apples. I highly recommend the investment into this contraption. It may look like an 18th century torture device, but it is amazing. I ended up using only 5 of the apples I’d set out for the crisp, because that was what filled my pan. That’s how I measure how many to use – however many fills my 9×9 pan.

Once the apples are in, I squirt some lemon juice on top and then sprinkle with some cinnamon sugar.

Then place your crust on. This is yet another step I do by hand since I find it much easier to place the topping with my fingers than to try and smear it around with a spoon.

I bake mine uncovered for 30 minutes. This allows the crust to get a nice crunchy top, but still be chewy on the underside. So each bite is a fabulous combination of crunchy, chewy, and gooey apple. Mmmmmm. Definitely eat it warm – with or without ice cream. I actually prefer apple crisp without ice cream; I save it for the pie!

Hope you enjoy some apple crisp this season!

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Apple Picking

Apple picking is definitely in my top 3 favorite fall activities (the other two being pumpkin decorating, and of course HALLOWEEN!). This past weekend my brother and his girlfriend were up from Boston for a visit so we took a family trip out apple picking!

The hubs being a goon.

  
Picking some low ones.

Chatting with my brother’s girlfriend, whom she adores.

 
Daddy helps reach the high ones.

  
My brother showing off his juggling skills.

We ended up with well over ten pounds of apples! I can’t wait to make some delicious treats with these. Apple crisp, apple fritters, apple pie. . . .mmmmmmm. Expect some apple recipe posts for sure in the coming weeks!

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