Gold Rush Apple Time!

Friday, October 24, 2008

These wonderful apples, possibly the perfect apple, are available for a short period of time from North Star Orchard. To buy them in bulk or to reserve the delicious cider from these apples, there’s a form on their website. You might think that this is overkill, but Gold Rush apple lovers are serious. To see all the hard to find varieties of apples and asian pears (another North Star specialty), visit one of their farmers market locations. If I sound like a commercial, it’s just that their fruit is so good and Ike and Lisa are really nifty people. Check it out.

Modest but Tasty Apple Cake

Monday, October 20, 2008

Clearly, this was my big day in the kitchen because I also made my favorite apple cake recipe. I’m afraid that only the apples from my Highand Orchards CSA were local, but the eggs were from cage-free hens. This cake is terrific with very ripe pears (especially Bartletts) in place of apples.

1/2 C butter
2 eggs
3/4 C brown sugar (can be mix of brown and white)
2t vanilla
2t baking powder
1t cinnamon
1 3/4C flour (I used 40/60 King Arthur wheat and white flours)
1t salt
1C chopped walnuts or other nuts, or a couple handfuls of millet are great
1/2C milk
4 medium apples, peeled and cut into small chunks or slices—whatever you prefer

10” springform pan or regular cake pan
I use parchment paper for all cake baking b/c it’s so easy to get the cakes out!

350 oven

Sift the dry ingredients. Cream butter, sugar(s), and vanilla, then add eggs. Add half the dry ingredients, the milk, then dry. Mix in the nuts/millet and apples. Spread in the pan and bake for approx. 40 mins. It makes a great breakfast cake, too.

Apple cake

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Aside from the dozen or so we’ve eaten in the past week, the first thing I did with my half bushel of apples picked from Linvilla Orchard was make Jewish Apple Cake. This recipe is not by any stretch of the imagination a recipe that’s been handed down from generation to generation, but a search to see if there was a recipe I might enjoy more than mine returned dozens of family recipes that only slightly differed from the one I’ve been using for the last several years. I guess you just don’t mess with a good thing.

INGREDIENTS

  * 3 cups all-purpose flour
  * 1/2 teaspoon salt
  * 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  * 2 cups white sugar
  * 1 cup vegetable oil
  * 4 eggs
  * 1/2 cup orange juice
  * 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  * 3-5 apples - peeled, cored and sliced
  * 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  * 5 teaspoons white sugar

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 10 inch tube pan. Combine the ground cinnamon and 5 teaspoons of the sugar together and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder and 2 cups of the sugar. Stir in the vegetable oil, beaten eggs, orange juice and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Pour 1/2 of the batter into the prepared pan. Top with 1/2 of the sliced apples and sprinkle with 1/2 of the cinnamon sugar mixture. Pour the remaining batter over the top and layer the remaining sliced apples and cinnamon sugar.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 70 to 90 minutes.

My recipe calls for sliced apples but since my toddler was helping me cut them with his plastic Ikea knife I used chunks of apples instead. The recipe did not suffer.  The cooking time really does vary depending on the number of apples you use and your oven temperature. I tested the cake after 70 minutes and ended up cooking it for about 85 total. This is a thick, dense, cake. I think it must weigh about ten pounds.  I used a bundt pan (because I don’t have a tube pan) so I put some sliced apples at the bottom of the pan to make it look prettier.

Apple heaven

Sunday, October 05, 2008

While not a website about supporting local farmers and eating seasonally, A Food Coma is a new blog devoted to New Jersey.  And hey, we gotta support Jersey, right?

A Food Coma is a group blog devoted to restaurant reviews, recipes…there’s even a podcast!  Their lead story is pretty timely - a recipe for apple pie.  We are awash in locally grown apples right now.  Linvilla currently has nearly 25 varieties available for picking.  The Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal has dozens of varieties from various area farms. 

Other local orchards for apple picking:

Weaver’s Orchard, Berks County Shadybrook Farm, Bucks County Styer Orchard, Bucks County Highland Orchards, Chester County Johnson Farm, Jersey Terhune Orchards, Jersey