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.

Old Fashioned Dried Apple Pies

Since we don’t have any apples this fall, I may have to break out the tub of apples that we dried a few years ago and use them in place of fresh apples.

All right, Max, I know those dried apples have been around for a couple of years, but dried fruit does not spoil!! That’s why people dried food. It lasted forever.

Fried apple pies are an Eastern Kentucky mountain tradition that dates back to at least the days of the early settlers. Medieval housewives dried apples, and probably so did the Greek and Roman housewives. Although I don’t think the Greeks had apples. The porbably would not grow well in their climate.

In some places, a dried apple pie was a traditional dish to take to a funeral. Probably because most pioneer housewives would have some dried apples at any time of the year, and pies transported well in buggies and wagons, unlike fancy cakes.

Small Fried Pies were also a staple in kid’s lunches back in the days of metal lunch boxes or earlier with lunch pails. Sweet, and not too messy.

You can make dried apples into a regular style pie, or the way I liked them, in small, handsized half moon fried pies. In the old days the pastry was made with lard, and then the pies were deep fried in lard. No wonder life expectancy was low!!

Today, most women bake their Fried Pies, but we still call them Fried. Makes perfect sense, yes?

This recipe is based on commercial dried apples that come in the cellophane bags. For homemade, really dry apples, you start with an overnight soak in the water. And you must make sure that you cook the apple mixture until it is VERY thick. Otherwise, you will have the liquid seeping out of the pies and running all over the cookie sheet. Which, of course, then proceeds to burn on to the pan and smoke up the oven. So, Max, remember, “cook until VERY thick.”

Apple Fried Pies:

8 ounces dried apples
1 cup water
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 double pie crust pastry making

Cook dried apples in water in saucepan over low heat for about 30 minutes. Add sugar and spices. Cook 10 minutes longer. Remove from heat and add almond extract.

Roll half of the pie crust into a 12 inch circle. Spoon half of the apple mixture on to half of the circle. Fold the pastry over to enclose filling and seal the edge with a fork or a pastry crimper. Repeat with the remaining pie crust. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet that has been lined with foil to catch drips.

Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes until golden.

Yields 8 servings

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.