Crumb topped apple pie

A few weeks back, my mom and I rode on the annual Boland, Iowa, bike ride and we were treated to pie at the finish. I picked the crumb topped apple pie and loved it so much I wanted to make it at home.

Pie after our Boland bike ride

I clipped a recipe for crumb topped apple pie from Taste of Home a couple years ago. I loved the back story behind the pie: The 80 year old pie baker from West Des Moines makes dozens of apple pies each fall for her son's business clients. Sounds like her recipe is a keeper!

My apple pie didn't turn out as pretty as the recipe photo, but it tastes terrific. I used MacIntosh apples from Center Grove Orchard near Cambridge, Iowa.

Click here for a link to the recipe, if you want to give it a try: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Crumb-Topped-Apple-Pie

Gap in apple pie crust?

OK, this isn't the prettiest pie.  You'll just have to trust me when I say it was delicious. It was so good, I ate a slice for breakfast the next day!  But as you can see, there was a gap between the pie crust and the apple pie filling.  I stacked the apple slices so high they were tumbling off the pan before I placed the final crust.  But the filling still cooked down so much that there was a gap under the crust.

At first, I thought it was the variety of apples that caused the problem.  I bought the apples at the nearby Center Grove Orchard in Cambridge.  How cute is this farm store?!

The late freeze and summer drought have cut this year's apple crop, and not all the varieties are available yet.  I asked the orchard staff what was the best for baking pie.  They recommended that I use a mix of McIntosh apples and Gala apples (since the Gala apples were on sale).

When I saw the gap in the pie crust, I searched the Internet for an answer to why it happened.  Then I got the bright idea to call the Iowa State University Extension Answerline, which is staffed by home economists. And they answered my question right away.  Turns out, I needed to cook the apple pie filling before placing it in the pie.  They also recommended that next time, I try a different variety than Gala apples, which are actually better for eating than baking.  So glad I thought to call the Answerline!

Oh, and if you're looking for a basic apple pie recipe that's similar to the one I tried, here's a good one from Pillsbury.

Do you have any apple pie baking tips?  I'm always looking for advice in the kitchen.

Apple streusel muffins

One of my favorite food magazines is Seasons from Hy-Vee, an Iowa-based grocery store chain.  I used to pick up a copy of Seasons whenever I saw a new edition at Hy-Vee.  But then I figured out I could sign up to have the magazine delivered to my house -- for free!  No yearly subscription!

Like the name suggests, Seasons features recipes that are perfect for the season.  This month's issue offers Christmas baking and seafood recipes (which I can't wait to try for New Year's this year.)

As for the baking recipes, I had a few overripe apples in my refrigerator, so I decided to bake up a batch of the Baked Apple Crumble Muffins featured in the fall issue. The recipe was a little more complicated to make than the typical muffin recipe.  But I loved all the different spices, particularly the "heavy" (1/2 tsp.) dose of cloves.

My husband wasn't too excited when he saw these muffins cooling on the counter.  But he ended up loving them.  "I don't usually like muffins, but these were good," he said.  So I'm sharing the recipe with all of you.  Hope you enjoy it!

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Baked Apple Crumble Muffins (or Apple Streusel Muffins)

From Hy-Vee's Seasons magazine

Topping:

• 1/2 C. unsalted butter
• 1/4 C. sugar
• 1/4 C. plus 2 Tbls. packed light brown sugar
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
• Pinch of salt
• 1-1/3 C. flour
• 1/2 C. chopped walnuts

Muffins:

• 1-1/2 C. packed light brown sugar
• 1/3 C. vegetable oil
• 1/3 C. unsweetened applesauce
• 1 large egg
• 1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2-1/2 C. flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 3/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp. ginger
• 1 C. buttermilk
• 1-1/4 C. chopped walnuts
• 2-1/2 C. chopped apple

For topping: In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Remove pan from the heat and add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Stir with a rubber scraper, pressing when necessary, until smooth.  Add flour and mix until well-blended and pasty.  Fold in chopped walnuts; set aside.

For muffins:  Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  In a large bowl, whisk together brown sugar, oil, applesauce, egg and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger.  Stir oil mixture into flour mixture alternately with buttermilk.  Stir in walnuts.  Fold in apples, mixing until just combined.  Spoon into greased standard-size muffin cups, filling almost full. Break up the topping mixture with your fingers into medium-size pieces.  Evenly sprinkle the topping pieces over the muffin batter. Bake 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown and tops spring back when lightly touched. Yield: 18 muffins.

Iowa recipes: Caramel Apple Bars

Nope, I'm not done with apple recipes yet.  I made these caramel apple bars for my husband the other day, and he loved them!  This recipe is a keeper.

I found the recipe for caramel apple bars in an Iowa ag newspaper. Just goes to show, farm women know how to bake!

These bars actually turned out more like a coffee cake.  My favorite part was pouring the caramel sauce on top, of course.

My husband loved the coconut on top of these bars.  Who knew that apple and coconut were a perfect pairing?

Here's the recipe if you want to give them a try.  Enjoy!

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Caramel apple bars

• 1 C. pecans, chopped
• 2/3 C. brown sugar
• 1 C. coconut
• 2-1/2 C. flour
• 1-1/2 C. sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 C. evaporated milk
• 1/3 C. water
• 2 C. apples, peeled and finely shredded or chopped

Topping:

• 2/3 C. brown sugar
• 1/2 C. evaporated milk
• 4 Tbls. butter, softened

Combine pecans, brown sugar and coconut in bowl and set aside. In mixing bowl, combine the next six ingredients.  In a small bowls, combine egg, milk, water and apples. Add to flour mixture. Mix well. Pour into a greased 10x15-inch pan and sprinkle with nut mixture. Bake 40 to 45 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit. In a heavy saucepan, combine topping ingredients. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until sugar dissolves and mixture thickens slightly, about 8 minutes. Poke holes with fork in top of hot bars. Immediately spoon topping over bars. Cool.

Cookie Friday: Apple brownies

I don't know about you, but I can't resist a good apple recipe, especially when Iowa-grown apples are in season in the fall. I found this apple brownie recipe in a recent issue of King Arthur Flour's Baking Sheet. I'm not sure why they are called "brownies," instead of "blondies."  There isn't any chocolate in this recipe.  Yet these apple "brownies" are still excellent.  I've baked up these brownies twice now because my husband liked them so much. The recipe is below, if you want to give them a try.

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Apple Brownies

From King Arthur Flour

• 1-1/4 C. King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 C. unsalted butter
• 1 C. sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2-1/2 C. (3 medium) apples, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 C. cinnamon chips (I left these out)
• 1/2 C. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit. Grease and flour a 9-inch square pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside. melt the butter, either in a saucepan or the microwave. Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar. Cool the mixture to lukewarm, then stir in the egg. Once incorporated, add the flour mixture, mixing to combine. Fold in the apples, chips and nuts. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes. Yield: 16 brownies.

I'll take seconds

One of my favorite local orchards, Center Grove Orchard near Cambridge, sends out and weekly e-newsletter, which recently announced that the orchard store was going to stay open this year until Christmas.  I love snacking on the dried apple chips we've made thanks to our handy-dandy food dehydrator.  So I decided to drive over to the orchard to see what apples they still have for sale.

I told the orchard staff that I wanted apples for drying, and they offered to find some apple "seconds" in their back room for me.  I only recently learned that "seconds" are bruised or otherwise unattractive apples, which I discovered from a recent post on one of my favorite blogs, Home Joys.

So I agreed to buy a few bags of seconds, although right now, I can't quite remember what variety of apple they were.  I think it was a Mutsu apple, which looks a bit like a Golden Delicious.

To my surprise, the clerk returned from the backroom with four 10-pound bags of apples for me to take home.  She offered to give me two bags for free.  So the next thing I knew, I was navigating a wheelbarrow-full of apples out to my truck.

My husband, who was happy to have an indoor project now that fishing season is over, immediately got to work sorting through the bags, looking for any, ahem, "bad apples." 

Yes, we use our microwave as a TV stand.  Leaves us with more counterspace :)

All the apples were in pretty good shape, except for a few soft and sunburned spots.

He cut them up, sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar, and stacked them in our food dehydrator.  (Note: This is an old picture from last year, just to give you an idea of how we use the dehydrator.)

I fed a few dried apples to my sister last time she stopped for a visit.  She replied, "I want these for Christmas!"  So I've saved a gallon-size bag of dried apples just for her Christmas stocking.  But I had to hide the bag, because I've been eating the apple chips faster than we can make them!

My new favorite apple crisp

What's your favorite taste of the fall?  Apples? Squash? Sweet potatoes?  Personally, I love them all, but apples are by far my favorite for fall cooking and baking.  I've been taking advantage of the seasonal apple sales at the grocery store and local orchard and bringing at least one bag of apples home each week.  I mostly buy Jonathans, because they are a good all-purpose baking and sauce apple. 

But a few weeks back, I stopped at Bauer's Market in La Crescent, Minn., on my way home from visiting family, and there were several apple varieties that I had never seen in the Iowa orchards I visit.  I decided to try something new, and I brought home a bag of Fireside apples, which were reasonably priced and labeled as good baking apples. 

I was craving apple crisp the other night, so I broke out one of my favorite Iowa church cookbooks and tried a new-to-me recipe.  And talk about beginner's luck -- this apple crisp was wonderful!  It's super easy to make on a weeknight, and the Fireside apples gave the dessert a nice tart bite.

I was pretty generous with the cinnamon called for in the recipe, because my husband believes you can never add too much cinnamon.  (And he's usually right about these things.)

This recipe may not be original or fancy, but it's good.  Really good.  So I'm sharing it with all of you.  Enjoy!

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Apple Crisp
From Deer Creek Lutheran Church Cookbook, Carpenter, Iowa

• Apples, sliced (about 5 large)
• 1/2 C. sugar & cinnamon, to taste
• 1 C. brown sugar
• 1/2 C. quick oatmeal
• 1/2 C. flour
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 C. walnuts, chopped
• 1/3 C. butter

Sliced apples go in bottom of an 8x8-inch pan to the depth of about 2 inches. Mix sugar with cinnamon and sprinkle over top of apples. Mix the brown sugar, oatmeal, flour, vanilla and nuts together. Cut in butter until crumbly. Put over top of apples and bake at 350 to 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Serve warm, with either ice cream or Cool Whip.

Playing with a new toy

A few weeks back, I gave my husband a food dehydrator for his birthday. Admittedly, this was a selfish gift. I've been eyeing these dehydrators for months now on my Amazon wish list. I couldn't come up with a better idea for a gift, and I knew he was interested in making homemade jerky, so I ended up buying the dehydrator. He was pretty excited when he opened his gift up.

I've been making frequent trips to a local apple orchard for honeycrisp apples (both my husband and I can't get enough of these candy-like apples), so I bought an extra bag of Jonathon apples to experiment with apple chips in the dehydrator.

We used a fun little apple corer I received from my sis last Christmas to make the apple rings.
Then Josh stacked up the apples in the trays.

He left the peels on, and I'm glad he did. It really adds to the beauty of the apple chips, don't you think?

The apple chips turned out wonderful, and I love that they don't have the preservative taste of the dried fruit I usually buy at the store. My husband also made a batch coated with cinnamon and a touch of brown sugar. I taste-tested those cinnamon apple chips last night, and they were divine! Can't wait to see what else he tries in his new toy.

At-home apple fest!

It's an exciting night at our house. My sister stopped by to watch the Vikings-Packers game. She's a Packers fan, my husband's a Viking fans and I just love to watch Bret Favre. Luckily, I made plenty of snacks this weekend to keep them both happy and content, although they still yell at the TV every once and a while as if they were fans in the stands at the Metrodome.

This last week, the temperatures dipped close to freezing. I realized that there are only a precious few days left in Iowa's apple season. So I woke up early and drove to a local apple orchard, which is located about 20 minutes from home. The orchard's country store offered nearly a dozen different varieties of apples. I came home with Cortland, McIntosh and the beloved Honeycrisp apples. I can't get enough of the Honeycrisp. I've been eating two a day, sometimes dipped with peanut butter. They are so sweet, crunchy and juicy!

When I walked into the orchard store, there was a family standing on the porch eating apple cider donuts. I couldn't resist the sweet, cinnamon aroma, so I broke down and bought a half dozen donuts. I'm so glad I did. I don't think I've ever tried homemade donuts. They were so moist, and I could actually taste the hint of apple cider. I brought the donuts home, and they were gone by the end of the day.

Inspired by my trip to the orchard, I settled into the kitchen and started peeling apples. My first recipe: red-hot applesauce. It's one of my husband's favorites; he remembers his grandma serving this at Christmas.

The not-so-secret ingredient -- red hot candies!

I have to admit, I was a little doubtful about this recipe. Why ruin perfectly good apples with melted sugar candy? But let me tell you, I'm a believer now. This was by far my best batch of applesauce this year. The sauce was sweet and wonderfully packed with cinnamon flavor. And you got to love the rosey red color.

The applesauce went immediately from bowl to my cup.

Mmmm...so good and cinnamon-y!

I could have stopped at the applesauce, but no, I kept going. A few weekends back, I tried to can apple pie filling for the first time.

Unfortunately, when I put the jars away for storage, I noticed that the rims were sticky, a sure sign that the jars didn't seal properly. So I was forced to turn this beautiful filling into an apple pie -- ASAP!

I'm still trying to perfect the whole pie-making process. I've had to learn from scratch, and I've tried nearly a half dozen crust recipes with varying degrees of success. I finally settled on a lard recipe, which I found on the back of the lard box.

The apple pie filling was good, although not great. It was a little bland, and the apples were softer than I'd like. Next time, I'm going to try Granny Smith apples, even though that means the apples probably won't be Iowa grown.