Apple-Granola Quick Bread

This quick bread really is an autumn delight, but it's great any time of the year!

(Editorial note: While this recipe is very good and I can vouch for its tastiness, we have no pictures of the recipe or the finished product to share. Technical error. However, we will be substituting other autumny pictures for your viewing pleasure. You may now return to your recipe.)

Apple-Granola Quick Bread

Ingredients:

1 cup applesauce (preferably homemade)
2 Tablespoons apple butter (preferably homemade)
1/2 cup coconut oil (or your favorite cooking oil)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 + 1/4 cup granola (preferably homemade)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Whisk together the applesauce, apple butter, oil, eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, then fold in 1/2 cup granola.

Divide into two loaf pans and sprinkle 1/4 cup granola down the middle of the loaf.

Bake at 350° for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Wait a minute! Did I hear complaints out there? You don't think it's fair for me to recommend homemade applesauce, apple butter, and granola?

We've got you covered here at the cafe!

Here's how to make applesauce: Jan's Applesauce.

And then here's Virginia's Caramel Apple Butter.

Then to finish up, Virginia's Dried Cherry and Almond Granola.

Now, no more excuses! :)

A lovely fall day at White Rocks, above Deadwood, South Dakota.

Applesauce!

It’s apple time, and this year Indiana and Michigan have had a bumper crop!

We were visiting family this past week, and on Thursday I picked up a few apples to take home.

Most of these will turn into applesauce. My family loves homemade applesauce so much, they’ll go without rather than eat store-bought.

When we lived in Indiana, I would make 70 quarts a year, and they all disappeared by the next summer.

Now, before you think I’ve worked my fingers to the bone peeling and coring apples, let me introduce you to my friend….

We'll call him Victor.... He's a Victorio Strainer, and he's a magician. He made an appearance here at the cafe about a year ago, (here), but it's time for an encore appearance.

Look at that picture again - you put your apples, tomatoes, or whatever in the top, turn the crank, and before you know it, out pops sauce! And the peels and cores go out the other chute :)

This guy is my workhorse. I learned about him from a friend who learned about him from the Amish.

What? You thought the Amish lived in the dark ages? Let me tell you a secret: Just because you live without electricity and automobiles doesn't mean you don't have the finest tools available!

Okay, so here’s the recipe:

Jan’s Homemade Applesauce

Ingredients:

1/2 bushel apples

1/4 -1/2 cup lemon juice

Sugar to taste (optional - I only add it if the apples aren't sweet enough)

Before we go any further, let’s look at those apples. The kind of apple you use makes a huge difference in the taste and texture of your sauce. I like to use a combination of Golden Delicious, Jonathan and Macintosh.

The Golden Delicious apples give the sauce body – that nice, smooth, saucy texture – but the flavor is a bit mild for me.

The Jonathans have a nice texture, and the big thing they add is a rosy color. Beautiful!

.

The Macintosh apples give the sauce its flavor – slightly tangy, super apple-y. But if you use only Macintosh, the texture tends to be a bit watery.

But if you’re able to get all three of these varieties and put them together, you have my signature apple sauce!

Okay, here’s the process:

Wash the apples – at least three times. This gets off all the dust, bug footprints, etc. that your apples have picked up while they were hanging around on the trees.

Cut the apples in quarters and discard the stems. This is a great time to check for less than desirable parts, like worms that tried to sneak in for a free ride to your kitchen (and then out to the compost pile).

Put the apple quarters in a big pot (like a stock pot or your canner) with enough water to cover them and the ¼ cup lemon juice.

Cook the apples until they’re done.

How do you know they’re done? While cooking, the apples start to swell. When they begin to burst – you can tell by the cracks along the side – it’s time to make them into sauce.

These have cooked a little too long....

While the apples are cooking, I get Victor ready…

I forgot to mention that if you don’t have a Victorio strainer, you can use one of these. It’s the same principle, but you need to peel and core the apples first.

Victor doesn’t say much, but he munches those apples down!

Once you have your applesauce made, then it’s time for canning. You can applesauce with the water-bath method (apples are acidic enough to make it safe). I won’t go into the method, but you can read about it here.

My 2009 batch of applesauce (in the Kansas kitchen).

Or you can freeze your applesauce. All you need to do is put your applesauce in a freezer container or bag and stick them in the freezer.

I like to can mine so I can pull one out of the pantry at the last minute – no thawing needed J

So now you know what I'm going to be doing this week...we brought 5 bushels of apples home from Indiana. 

By the way, the van smelled fabulous on the trip home!

Speaking of trips, it's time for a slide show:

E&S Sales in Shipshewana was selling gourds, flowers and pumpkins out in front
of the store. Aren't those mums beautiful?

Do you remember my post on Haystack Suppers
last month? Here. There's one coming up!

And Friday night, on the way home, we stayed right near the Indiana Dunes National Seashore on Lake Michigan. Now this is a Lake :)

A tug with a barge leaving the Port of Indiana.

Itty-bitty waves. The Lake was very calm that evening.

Dunes. The best sand in the world.

This is a small lake behind the dunes - a favorite for migrating waterfowl.

Along with several of these Great White Egrets, we also saw several Sandhill Cranes.
No pictures of them, of course :(

And Thatcher missed us, of course. I think he thought we were gone forever! But after greeting us, getting into everything he could find, and eating a good lunch, he dropped. Poor guy!

Whaa..at?

You're still here, right?

Good.

And Wynter? She jumped into the van while we were unloading and wouldn't get out. She doesn't want us leaving without her again!

Happy applesauce making!

A Potpourri of Apples, Cookbooks and Gadgets

Happy Labor Day! For those of us in the States, today is a day to celebrate work by, well, not working :)

I know a lot of writers take advantage of this extra writing day by cranking out as many words as possible, but some of us are taking family time.

While you're reading this and drooling over the recipes I'm about to share, here's where I'll be:

All six of us have the day off, so we're hiking to the top of Harney Peak, the highest mountain between the Rockies and the Pyrenees.

These pictures are from last year's hike - ask me this afternoon if we made it to the top this time!


So, on to the recipes.

It's good to have friends, especially friends with apple trees. My friend Mel gave me this bag of apples last week -

We haven't had a very good year for apples, and these babies weren't grocery-store perfect, but they were oh, so welcome!

So the first thing I did was wash them. No matter where you get your apples, it's important to wash them thoroughly. I wash them three times, transferring them between sinks.

The next step was to sort them. I found eight good sized, well-shaped apples.

And now for a recipe. These were old fashioned apples, so I pulled out one of my favorite old fashioned cookbooks. This one was published in 1942 by my home denomination's publishing house. I grew up in the Church of the Brethren, a small Anabaptist denomination with the same roots as the Amish and Mennonites, but from Germany rather than Switzerland. I could bore you with all the similarities and differences in the denominations and the history of how my ancestors from the Emmental district of Switzerland ended up in the Brethren Church...but (yawn)...this is a cooking blog.

So anyway - if you notice, this is the Granddaughter's Inglenook Cookbook. The original one was published 1901, and this is the "updated" version. This one assumes the cook has a thermostat on her oven and measuring cups in her cupboard.

I found a recipe for Deep Dish Apple Pudding.

And yes, it's as good as it sounds.

The first step is to peel, core and slice the apples.

And if you don't have one of these gadgets, it's time to get one!

This is what the apple looks like after it's gone through the corer-peeler-slicer:







You will need about 8 cups of sliced apples. Put them in a large bowl, and then add 1/2 cup white sugar and cinnamon. The recipe says "cinnamon to taste". I like cinnamon, so I put in one tablespoon, maybe a little more.

Mix the apples thoroughly with the sugar and cinnamon, and then put them in a baking dish. I used my 11x8.5 inch that I picked up somewhere - it's an odd size. A 9x13 would work, too.



Now for the topping. Melt 1/2 cup butter and mix with 1/2 up brown sugar and 1 cup flour. Stir this together until it's smooth. Sprinkle it over the apples.

You can also add 1 cup oatmeal and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda to the topping to make more of an apple crisp.

Bake at 350 degrees "until apples are tender". I baked it for 35 minutes.

And, of course, serve it with ice cream!












Now the Deep Dish Apple Pudding was delicious, but I still had a half-bushel of apples left!

Some of them had rust spots, some had bruises, others were kind of crooked and stumpy - perfect for apple sauce.

Back in the days when we lived in northern Indiana, we lived about a mile from the largest apple orchard in Indiana, Kercher's Sunrise Orchards. I'd stop by there about once a week during September and October and buy seconds - apples that didn't make it through the sorting process - for $11.00 a bushel.

Man, those were the days!

I would make 70 quarts of apple sauce every year. Which brings me to my absolute favorite of all time gadgets: my Victorio Strainer.

There's no way I would attempt 70 quarts of applesauce without this puppy!

Just wait 'til you see this baby at work!

To make applesauce - 

 Fill a large pot about 2/3 full with water and add 1/2 cup lemon juice. 

Quarter your apples, remove the stems and cut out all the bad spots (and watch for worms...).

 Cook the apples until they are soft and start swelling (about 1 hour from start to finish - but watch them closely as the end of the hour approaches).

Now it's time for the strainer. Put the apples, a few at a time, in the hopper at the top and turn the crank.

 The applesauce comes out here.

The peel and core comes out here.

 And we have applesauce! Sweeten to taste!