Shania Twain's Apple Pie

If you haven’t made Shania Twain’s Canadian Bannocks, rush right out to the kitchen and whip up a batch. They are perfect for these crisp fall mornings.

Perfect for crisp fall evenings is Shania Twain’s Country Apple Pie. The Country Music Star’s addition to this classic fall treat is raisins. Perhaps that comes from her Canadian heritage? Her crust is a little different to with lemon juice, butter and egg yolk which makes for a rich, yellow crust.

Tune her “From This Moment On” on the CD player and crank out this luscious pie. When your man comes through the door, he’ll sing, “Honey, I’m Home” and dig into this pie. You’ll be singing, “Man, I Feel Like A Woman” after the kiss that this great pie will bring.

Shania Twain’s Country Apple Pie:

¾ cup light brown sugar
½ cup flour
¼ cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon salt
8 apples
1/3 cup raisins
Juice of one lemon
2 tablespoons melted butter

Shania says that the best apples for this pie as Granny Smiths. Peel, core with apple corer, and cut apples into wedges.

Make your favorite double pie crust, or try Shania’s version below, and place into a large pie pan.

Juice the lemon with a juicer. In a large mixing bowl, mix the brown sugar, flour, white sugar, spices and salt. In another mixing bowl, mix the apples, the lemon juice, butter and raisins. Add brown sugar mixture to the apples and lightly toss.

Spoon the apples into the crust and chill for 15 minutes. Roll out the top crust and place on pie. Use remaining dough to cut out decorations for the top of the crust. Beat one small egg with a tablespoon of water and brush over the top of the pie. Add decorations (like little apples or leaves) cut from the remaining dough and brush again. Sprinkle top with white sugar.

Bake in a 375 degree over for about 50 to 60 minutes until the crust is golden. Cool on a wire cooling rack. Serve hot or cold. Serves 10.

Shania’s Double Pie Crust:

1 ½ cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
Grated zest of a lemon
¼ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold butter
2 tablespoons cold vegetable shortening
1 egg yolk
3-4 tablespoons ice water

Mix flour, zest, salt, sugar in a mixing bowl. With pastry blender, cut in the butter and shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Mix ice water and egg yolk and stir into flour one tablespoon at a time until dough just starts to form. Divide dough in half, and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, or up to 2 days.

One Last Apple Recipe

I know, Max, that we have barely scratched the surface of apple recipes, but enough is enough! Still I had to share this one, last apple recipe with you. Except for the addition of the apples, it is your basic sweet potato casserole that everyone makes for Thanksgiving. The difference here is the apples and the fact that the fruits are left in chunks and not mashed as is usual.

No, of course, the original recipe did not call for bourbon, but bourbon and sweet potatoes just go together like crackers and peanut butter. They are a natural mix. This recipe came from a cookbook out of New England, and you know that they do NOT use bourbon. Such a shame too.

Apple Sweet Potato Casserole:

6 sweet potatoes, baked and peeled
6 Granny Smith apples, peeled
1 stick butter
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup maple syrup
Roughly chopped pecans
¼ cup bourbon

Use a fairly large casserole with lid, and grease well. Cut the potatoes and apples into small bite-sized pieces, mix, and put in the casserole. Pour the bourbon over the sweet potatoes and apples. Melt the butter and sugar in a small sauce pan. Add the syrup and pecans, and then pour over the top of the casserole. (Casserole can be fixed to this point up to a day early and held in the refrigerator. Allow to come to room temperature before baking the next day.) With cover on the casserole, bake for one hour at 350 degrees.

Serves 8 to 10 as a side dish. Reheats well in the microwave too.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Talk about unusual, Max, then check out this Shaker Apple and Pork Stew. It starts out kind of like a Pork Roast basted with applesauce, and then it adds carrots, potatoes, and onions like a beef stew. Come to think of it, I often add potatoes, carrots and onions to my pork roasts. So maybe this isn’t such an unusual recipe after all.

Shaker Apple and Pork Stew:

3 pounds boneless pork
3 pounds applesauce
2 tablespoons mixed cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg
6 small red skinned potatoes
3 carrots
2 onions
2 apples

Cut the pork into small cubes. In a heavy Dutch Oven, place the pork, applesauce, spices. Cover and cook on high heat for 10 minutes. Reduce heat and simmer for at least 4 hours. An hour before serving, add the unpeeled whole potatoes, the carrots that have been peeled and cut into large chunks, and the onions that have been quartered. About 15 minutes before serving, add the apples that have been peeled and sliced thinly. Serve in soup bowls.

Serves 8.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

I knew it, Erma. I knew that some way or another you would work in the alcohol–even with the poor, teetollaling Shakers! I don’t see those quaint Shaker Sisters putting down barrels of home/village dried plums into barrels of brandy. If so, some of the Shaker brothers probably “sampled” the brew from time to time.

I have had your wonderful Brandied Prunes and they are addicting.

You mentioned your Shaker Apple Soup, and I thought of this odd Shaker Apple Curry Soup. Do you have any idea when curry powder came into use? Certainly not in the earliest years of the Shaker villages. This is a most unusual soup.

Apple Curry Soup:

2 large apples
2 onions
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon flour
½ teaspoon curry powder
2 cups chicken broth
8 ounces apple juice or white wine
3 ounces diced chicken breast

Peel, core and chop the apples and onions. In a frying pan, melt the butter and cook the apples and onions until they are soft. Add the flour and curry powder and cooking for 5 minutes more. Add everything else, except the chicken, and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain through a sieve and return to the pan. Add the chopped chicken breast just before serving.

Serves 4.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Looking through my Shaker cookbooks yesterday, I saw a recipe for Apple and Prune Stuffing, and I thought, how German/Danish/Swedish. There is nothing like a good Prune Stuffing for a duck or the Christmas Goose.

Then I began to read the recipe. Cracker crumbs? No biscuits or bread?

Then I got to the end and realized that it wasn’t the goose that the Shakers were stuffing. It was squash and onions and cabbage!

Bingo! I realized that this was one of those recipes from the meatless period. What an interesting blend of flavors this must produce. And how modern.

Naturally I had to laugh at the first part of the directions of cooking the prunes. Storing your prunes in brandy, like I ALWAYS recommend, means your prunes are nice as moist to begin with. With the packaging today, you probably don’t need to cook them either, but imagine how hard prunes must have been back in Shaker days.

Shaker Apple and Prune Stuffing:

Soak 6 whole prunes in boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain and pit. Chop well. (If using prunes that have already been marinated in brandy as I suggest, you can omit the soaking.

Measure the prunes and add an equal amount of peeled, chopped apple. To this add 2 tablespoons cracker crumbs, 2 tablespoons butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Use this to stuff squash, onions, or cabbage. If you like a sweeter stuffing, add a tablespoon sugar and a beaten egg.

Yields about a cup and a half stuffing

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Erma, when you sent me that Shaker Apple Omelet recipe a few days ago, I was reminded of a similar Shaker pudding recipe from the Watervliet Village in New York.

It is called Shaker Apple Cream Pudding, although I always serve it with a crust as a pie. You know my family. Anything so long as it is served as a pie.

Like your Omelet, you can begin with apple sauce and cut down considerably on the prep time. The Mennonites in our area make a version of this that they call an Applesauce Pie.

Shaker Apple Cream Pudding from Watervliet Village in New York:

1 dozen apples
6 eggs
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup heavy cream

Peel, core and cook with a little bit of water the dozen apples in a heavy, large sauce pan. When soft, strain through a colander, or use a food processor. Beat in the eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg and lemon juice. Place in a casserole or pudding dish and bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Chill the pudding. Whip the cream in a mixer, and stir into the pudding just before serving.

Serves 8.

Filling can also be poured into a pie tin lined with a rich crust and baked as a pie. Omit the cream.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Let me know, Max, if you ever try that Shaker Apple Catsup. When the family says, “Pass the catsup,” you give them a jar of Apple Catsup. Wonder if they would notice the difference?

This Shaker recipe I have made many times. It is just your basic Apple Jelly with a twist: Ginger. The Shakers were almost as big on lemons as they were on apples. The believed, correctly, that lemons were good for you, and they ordered wagon loads of them. Knowing the Shakers, I will bet they even tried to grow them in their orchards. Cold climate or not.

To me, this is even better made with candied ginger that is finely minced. If your apples don’t cook up a pale pink blush, a tiny drop of red food coloring helps.

I included the Shaker sister’s comment from the original recipe just for fun. Think of cooking up a big batch of this in a huge copper kettle over an open fire. We don’t know how fortunate we are to have stoves that produce steady heat.

Shaker Apple Ginger Jelly:

3 pounds apples
3 cups light brown sugar
1 ½ cups lemons
2 tablespoons powdered ginger
1 teaspoon salt

With a grater, grate off all the peel from both lemons. Peel and chop the apples. Place in a heavy sauce pan and add the sugar, spices, grated lemon rind, the juice from the lemons, the ginger and the salt. Add just enough water to keep the mixture from burning. Cover and cook on the lowest temperature for 4 hours. Uncover, stir, and add water if necessary. “Great care must be taken to keep from scorching,” wrote the Shaker sister from Shirley Village.

Turn out into small jelly jars. Seal. Makes about 2 pints jelly.

Finely chopped preserved ginger slices can also be used.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Erma, I will bet that your Shaker Apple Soup dates back to England where the Shakers began. The English used to serve arriving guests with a cup of strong beef broth to take off the chill of winter travel. Not a bad idea even today, especially when you think of how cool (I called it plain cold!) most British homes are in the winter time.

Say the word Catsup today and everyone automatically thinks tomato. Of course, you and I know that catsup, or ketchsup as it is in most old cookbooks, predates the introduction of tomatoes into the everyday diet. Originally catsup was a condiment made with everything from fruit to green walnuts. No, I have never attempted Green Walnut Ketchsup, which begins with collecting green hulled walnut, but it sounds “interesting.”

The Shakers made Catsup with apples long before they were growing tomatoes. One of these years when we have tons of extra apples, I am going to try this recipe. I will bet that the Shakers served this as a condiment along with baked beef or pork.

Shaker Apple Catsup:

Pare and core 12 sour apples. Stew in a Dutch Oven with some water until the apples are soft. Press through a sieve.

For each quart of apple pulp add the following:

1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon powdered cloves
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon salt
2 onions
2 cups cider vinegar

In food mill, chop the onion very fine. Add all of the above to the apple pulp in the Dutch Oven. Bring to a boil and simmer for at least one hour, or until the mixture is very thick. Pour into hot, sterilized pint jars and seal.

Makes 3 pints.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Have you seen the size of the bake ovens at the Shaker villages? They are commercial sized. Of course, Max, they had to be to feel the numbers that they did. As I recall, they did not bake bread every day, but only a couple of days a week. They had immense dough trays for mixing and kneading dozens of loaves of bread at once.

Shaker Apple Soup was probably served on one of the days when the Shaker sisters were busy baking or preserving food. It is simple and filling, and could sit prepared off to the side of the fireplace while other foods were being prepared.

This could be served in a cup on a cold, winter day without the cream which would cut down on the calories and fat content. With the amount of heavy work the Shaker sisters and brothers did calories and fat content was not a concern.

Shaker Apple Soup:

2 cups beef broth
1 tart apple, quartered, cored, and unpeeled
1 onion, quartered
1 ½ teaspoons of mixed cinnamon and nutmeg
4 tablespoons apple cider
1 cup half and half

In a double boiler with a lid, combine the broth, apples, onion, and seasonings. Cover tightly and cook for several minutes until the apple is soft. Strain in a sieve. Discard the pulp. Return liquid to the double boiler and keep warm. When ready to serve, add the cider and cream. Serve hot.

Serves 4.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Erma, as you know, I had never heard of the Shakers before I met you. Then I began hearing about their simple elegant furniture. We had some communal societies here in Iowa too, though not exactly like the Shakers. The big one, of course, is the Amana Colonies, and they were big on orchards and apples too.

I found this recipe in one of the Shaker cookbooks you gave me years ago and I had to try it. I used bacon instead of the salt pork and brown sugar instead of the maple. My, how times have changed. Can you imagine what this everyday dish would cost today to make if you used real maple sugar?

Can you imagine how many pies the Shaker sisters would have to bake to feed the hundreds of people who lived in their village?

Apple-Pork Pie from Mount Lebanon Village:

2 pie crusts, unbaked
2 tablespoons flour
½ cup maple sugar (may substitute light brown sugar)
½ cup white sugar
Pinch of salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
6 tart apples, pared and sliced
½ pound salt pork, cut into thin small pieces 1 inch long (substitute bacon)
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons butter

Line a medium sized casserole with half of the pastry.

Mix the flour, salt, sugars, and spices. Combine that with the apples and place half of the mixture into the casserole. Cover with half of the pieces of salt pork. Sprinkle with pepper. Repeat the layers. Dot with butter and fit on the other half of the pie crust. Cut several slashes in the top crust. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes and then lower the temperature to 375 degrees and continue baking for 50 minutes. Serve warm.

Serves 6 to 8.

Bacon may be substituted for the salt pork.

Antique Shaker Apple Recipes

Max, can you name a fruit that has as many uses as an apple? Think of it. You can eat them raw. You can fry them. You can bake them. You can turn them into jelly. You can preserve them as apple sauce or apple butter. You can juice them. You can let the juice turn into vinegar or go to Hard Cider or Apple Jack–which can warm up the coldest winter evenings.

Growing up near the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill here in Kentucky, I was exposed to some of their old recipes and ideas about cooking. The Shakers, who were early into the health food diet, devised hundreds of recipes for apples. All of the Shaker villages had huge fruit orchards with hundreds of different kinds of apple trees. Their cookbooks and household guides are filled with references to what kind of apples to use for what purpose, and some of them are rather unique.

Take this Shaker Apple Omelet that dates from the early part of the 19th Century. There was a period when all the Shaker villages became vegetarian, and from that period came an emphasis on herbs and unusual main dishes that were meatless. This recipe came originally from the Watervliet Village in New York. Today we would serve this as a side dish or dessert, but for a while this was a main dish served without meat.

While more of a pudding than what we today think of an omelet, this is still a fine dish. To save on cooking time, one could begin with unsweetened apple sauce. This makes a nice presentation in individual casseroles.

Shaker Apple Omelet:

6 large tart apples
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup sugar
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
4 eggs

Peel and core the apples. Place in saucepan, cover with water and cook until very soft. Place in food processor and turn to sauce.

Add butter, sugar and spices and allow the mixture to cool. Beat the eggs with a hand whisk in a small mixing bowl. Stir into apple mixture. Pour into a medium sized buttered casserole, or two buttered pie tins.

If using 6 individual ramakins or small casseroles, reduce the baking time slightly.

Bake at 300 degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes when top is lightly golden.

Serves 4 generously. Use with Roast Pork for a main side dish, or serve for dessert.

Danish Apple Dessert

Cod with apples and celery? Hummmm. Maybe.

The Scandinavians have some unusual twists to their cooking. It is sort of German, but with a Scandinavian accent. Like this recipe for Danish Apple Bars. The secret ingredient is crushed corn flakes of all things. When it cooks up, you never would guess that there are corn flakes in the filling, but it adds a different touch to a familiar apple bar recipe.

Beware, these are rich and fattening!!

Danish Apple Bars:

2 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup shortening
1 egg yolk
Milk
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup corn flakes, crushed
6 apples
1 cup sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 egg white

Mix as if making a pie crust the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar and shortening. Mix egg yolk, milk and vanilla to equal a generous ½ cup of liquid. Add to dry ingredients and mix well to form dough.

Divide the dough in half. Roll out to fit a 12 x 15 jelly roll pan. Over top of the dough sprinkle the corn flakes. Then make a layer of the peeled and sliced apples. Over the apples sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mix.

Roll out the remaining piece of dough for a top. Cut slits in it and seal the edges. Beat the egg white with a hand whisk until frothy and then use pastry brush to spread over the top of the bars.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes and then reduce the heat to 350 and bake another 35 minutes. While still hot, drizzle on the glaze below. Let cool and cut into bars while still somewhat warm.

Glaze:

1 cup confectioners’ sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup hot water–more if needed for spreading

Old Norwegian Fish and Apple Recipe

You are right, Max, we have been heavy on the apple desserts the last few weeks, and apples can be used in every course of the meal. Now here is a really old and unusual Norwegian fish and apple recipe. Tell me, Max, when was the last time you saw a recipe that included Celeriac in the ingredients? Just use some celery instead.

I know you are thinking, “Erma doesn’t really like fish, so why does she have a Norwegian cod recipe around?” Because, my dear, this is one of the few ways you can cook cod that doesn’t taste like fish. The Norwegians must tire of cod too, as my cookbook has dozens of ways to dress up the fish so it doesn’t taste like fish.

Baked Cod with Apples and Celeriac from Norway:

1 ½ pound cod fillet
½ a celeriac, or 1 stalk celery
4 apples, peeled
1 onion
4 tablespoons tomato puree
¼ pint rich milk
salt and pepper to taste

Place celeriac, apples and onion in food processor and chop finely. Spread vegetables in bottom of a shallow, buttered oven dish casserole with lid. Wash and dry the cod and place on top of the veggies. Season with salt and pepper. Mix milk and puree and pour over the fish. Bake in a hot (400 degree) oven for about 30 minutes.

Serves 4.

German Apple Dish

It can’t be fall without my making an apple cake we first had when we were living in Germany. I call it Bavarian for it was down in Bavaria at a country inn that I first had this treat. My German being what it isn’t, I couldn’t ask the innkeeper for the recipe. Which started the Great Bavarian Apple Cake Quest. I found out that there are hundreds of recipes for Apple Cake in Germany. Every cook over there has an Apple Cake recipe, but none of them were quite what I had eaten in Bavaria. I eventaully found a recipe close to the original from Bavaria in all places, a children’s cookbook from Rhode Island. The children had collected ethnic recipes from their families and published them in a little fund raising cookbook.

The German grandmother called her recipe Bavarian Apple Dapple Cake, but I don’t know what the Dapple refers too. Substitute Delicious for Dapple and you get the idea. This bakes up in a tube pan with a nice glaze that makes is so rich and fall-like.

Bavarian Apple Dapple Cake:

1 ½ cups oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
3 cups peeled apples
1 teaspoons vanilla

Beat oil, sugar and eggs in mixer. Stir in the flour, soda, and salt. Coarsely chop the raisins, nuts and apples in a food processor. Add to batter with the vanilla. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 ½ hours in a tube pan.

While the Apple Dapple Cake is still warm brush on with a pastry brush, the icing. ½ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup butter and ¼ cup milk. Boil the icing mixture for 3 minutes.

Great Apple Salad

We have traded enough apple dessert recipes for each of us to have gained a dozen pounds. Here is an older Apple Salad recipe that isn’t so calorie laden. The dressing is not sugar laden, and the salad is quite good with no dressing at all.

Apple Salad:

4 large apples–mix of colors is nice
½ cup celery
½ cup small green grapes–seedless
½ cup chopped nuts, walnuts are best

Dressing:

2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk

Whisk the egg and milk with a whisk. Pour flour and sugar in a saucepan and then stir in the milk mixture. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook for several minutes until thick. Pour in covered plastic container, and store in the fridge.

Mix the apples, celery and green grapes in a bowl. Add dressing and toss. Sprinkle nuts on top.

Serves 10.

Make Your Own Apple Pie Filling

This recipe is not going to help you Erma, in your appleless state this fall, but you should file it away for next year. You love easy and cheap recipes. Well, this one fits the bill.

It assumes that you have an over abundance of apples (which is usually the case with you in the fall), and that you like to save money. Have you priced those little cans of prepared fruit pie fillings in the store? It is outrageous!! First off, one can of their filling does not a pie make. You need at least two cans. Secondly, it isn’t all that good. And Thirdly, who knows what sort of preservatives and such have been put in it!!

Since your apples are free (and going to waste on the ground anyways), about your only cost is the sugar. And your time which is about 2 hours tops.

The result is 7 generous quart sized pie fillings already made and sitting down on your basement shelves. Viola, you have an instant homemade apple pie. If you don’t feel like rolling out a pie crust, you can simply pour a can of this filling into a casserole, and top it with the Apple Crisp topping. Pop into the oven, and dessert is ready in 20 minutes.

Home-Canned Apple Pie Filling:

8 to 9 pounds firm apples
4 ½ cups sugar
1 cup quick-cooking tapioca
10 cups water
3 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon salt

Peel and slice the apples. Place in salted water to prevent discoloration while you are peeling the remainder.

Combine remaining ingredients in a 12 quart stockpot. Cook over medium-high heat until thickened, stirring constantly. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes longer.

Drain apples in a colander . Add apples to syrup. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute longer.

Spoon apples into hot sterilized jars, leaving an inch headspace. Seal the jars and process in boiling water bath for 25 minutes. Use a large stockpot with lid for the waterbath.

Yields 6 to 7 quarts.

Classic Apple Crisp Recipe

I’ve made your Apple Doughnut Muffins, Erma, and you are right, like the potato chip, “I’ll bet you can’t eat just one.” Bake up a batch of those, and you will attract the menfolk in from the yard like flies to honey.

Now for a nice “diet recipe” with apples, nothing can beat my Apple Crisp From Alabama. Wonder how an Alabama recipe ended up in this staunch Mid-Westerner’s file?

Anyways, it is “diet” because it includes that diet wonder food: Oatmeal. I say, include oatmeal in a recipe and it automatically is a diet recipe. Good for the heart and blood vessels the doctors say. You can make this without the oatmeal, but to my family, it isn’t an Apple Crisp without the oatmeal topping.

Apple Crisp From Alabama:

4 cups peeled apples
¼ cup water
¾ cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup butter
1 cup old fashioned oats (Optional)

Place the apples in a 6 x 10 inch baking dish. Add water. Mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt and oatmeal if using in a small mixing bowl. Cut in the butter until crumbley. Sprinkle over the apples. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes until apples are tender and the top is golden.

Yields 6 servings.

The oatmeal makes a more candy-like topping.

Celebrate Fall with Apples

Dearest Max, it has finally cooled down, and I am beginning to feel human again. Well, I’m never exactly human, but as human as I can be. It must be old age, but the extended heat has been a real trial for me–not to mention my poor yard and garden.

We haven’t a single apple on any of our trees, so I had to break down and buy some Jonathon Apples Saturday so I could make some apple recipes. It bothers my frugal Scotch soul to have to BUY apples, there are supposed to be free on my trees!!

I made the French Apple Pie with the Nutmeg Sauce from last week and it was delicious.

With Halloween coming, I also start thinking of pumpkins and doughnuts. As you know, I really don’t like the popular glazed doughnuts. My favorites are the cake type doughnuts. A Saturday afternoon treat would be to go to the hole-in-the wall Ward’s Bakery and buy one of their crunchy cake doughnuts dusted in powdered sugar. For Halloween, my mother could sometimes be persuaded to make up a big batch of our nutmeg flavored cake doughnuts. Alas, all the calories and fats in deep frying have made those treats a rare occasion.

Apple Doughnut Muffins are a compromise. They taste like a good cake type doughnut, but are baked. Calorie Enhanced they still are, but not quite a bad as deep fried. Problem is that they are so good, that one tends to eat more than one of them at a time. Diet Disaster.

Apple Doughnut Muffins:

2/3 cups soft butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch of salt
½ cup oil
1 cup, chopped, peeled apple
Melted butter
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cinnamon

Cream the butter and 1 cup of sugar in the mixer until light and fluffy. Blend in eggs. Mix the flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt in a small mixing bowl. Alternate blending in the flour mixture with the milk. Stir in the finely grated apple.

Spoon into greased or silicone muffin cups. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. As soon as you remove the muffins from the oven, dip them into the melted butter and then roll (or shake in a paper bag) in a mixture of the remaining cup of sugar and the cinnamon. Coat well.

Scandinavian Apple Dessert

While we were talking Danish aebleskivers, I remembered another apple recipe from Denmark and Sweden: Apple Coffee Cake. Scandinavians love sweets and coffee cakes of all varieties and this one is very simple. The different touch on this one is pouring the sour cream around on the top. This Scandinavian coffee cake is served hot and is best served warm–straight from the oven. The browned sour cream topping creates an unusual spiral effect.

Apple Coffee Cake:

1 ½ cups flour
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup walnuts
1 large apple
1 egg
½ cup milk
3 tablespoons oil
½ cup sour cream
½ cup sugar

Peel and grate the apple in a food processor. Chop the nuts in processor coarsely.

Mix and flour, ½ cup sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in large mixing bowl. Add the nuts, saving out a couple tablespoons for topping. Stir in the grated apple.

With hand whisk beat the egg. Then add the milk and oil. Blend and then fold into the apple mixture. Turn into a greased or silicone 9 inch round cake pan.

Spoon the sour cream over the top in a spiral fashion, leaving the center uncovered. Sprinkle the remaining ½ cup sugar over the top and scatter on the remaining nuts.

Bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving. Serve in wedges.

Makes 6 large servings.

Like most coffee cakes this one is best straight out of the oven. Now that we all have microwaves reheating a coffee cake is a breeze.

Washington State Apple Brownies

I LOVE Aebleskivers!! I loved Solvang too. It is one of the cute little villages that still retains its charm.

Yes, Erma, I remember our first visit with the Republican Women’s Club. We both wanted to buy so much, and we couldn’t afford hardly anything. So we bought aebleskiver pans which were a lot more practical than silver and linens when you come down to it.

You might want to try this Apple Brownies recipe I picked up in Washington State a few years ago. Being the Apple Capital of the World, cooks there put apples in everything.

I’m not sure that this is really a Brownie. Borwnies have CHOCOLATE. I would call this more of a apple bread, but it is very good. These are really moist so you have to store them in a air tight container. Of course, usually there aren’t enough left to worry about storing them.

Apple Brownies:

½ cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons hot water
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup nuts
6 medium apples, coarsely chopped

Cream the butter, sugar and eggs with a mixer. Add soda dissolved in hot water. Mix the dry ingredients in small mixing bowl. Fold into the creamed mixture. Fold in the nuts and apples.

Spray a large cookie sheet with sides (same pan you would use for a jelly roll). Spoon in the dough and smooth the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes. Cut into squares and serve.

Makes 30 brownies.

Keep in a tight container like the as these are very moist.