Autumn Comfort ~ Warm Apple-Buttermilk Custard Pie

Adapted from myrecipes.com

I'm on a roll with two new recipes in two days! Yesterday was one of those first wonderfully cool, rainy early fall days that always makes me want to heat up the oven and crank out baked goods. All I got done yesterday was the Enchilada Soup, so the baking had to wait until today. So far, this is all I have gotten done today, so I really need to kick it into gear because we need to replace our furnace, and if you saw our basement right now you would think I'm a hoarder. I have no aspirations to become a reality TV star, so cleaning the basement is a necessary evil that I must do, and soon. In the meantime, I've got a very interesting looking apple pie in the oven that I can't wait to try.

This recipe originated in Cooking Light magazine in March, 2003. I got it on myrecipes.com but first saw it on Pinterest. Pinterest really has opened up a whole new world of things to try! At first it sounded like apple crisp in a pie crust, but the buttermilk custard totally threw me. For the crust, I made the Pat-A-Pan crust from the Amish Cook's Baking Book that I told you about here: http://notcandlesagain.blogspot.com/2010/11/pumpkin-pie.html It's the one you make right in the pan. You can use the pre-made crust like it says in the recipe, but I personally think those are nasty and prefer to make my own. Your own favorite crust recipe will do just fine.

Instead of Granny Smith apples, which are an excellent baking apple. I chose to use Jonathans because, well, it's fall and Jonathans were in the store, and I love them.

Aren't these pretty?

Here's the recipe from myrecipes.com:

Crust:
1/2 (15-ounce) package refrigerated pie crust dough
cooking spray

Streusel:

1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 Tbsp cold butter, cut into small pieces

Filling

5 cups peeled and sliced Granny Smith apples (about 2 pounds)
1 cup sugar, divided
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Heat your oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare your crust. For the pre-made crust, spray the pie pan with cooking spray and place dough in pan. Flute the edges and fold under. Keep refrigerated while prepping the rest of the pie.

For the streusel, lightly spoon 1/3 cup flour into dry measuring cup and level with a knife. Okay, isn't this how we always do this? Baking 101... Anyway, combine the flour, brown sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon into a medium bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or fork (The recipe says use 2 knives.. I've got pretty decent knife skills but lets not press our luck!)Work this until it resembles a coarse meal, then put it in the refrigerator until you're ready for it later. I had trouble with the butter sticking to my pastry cutter, but eventually it worked.

Next, peel, core and slice your apples. Heat a large nonstick skillet and melt a chunk of butter - about a tablespoon. Add the sliced apples, 1/4 cup of the sugar, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Let this hang out and cook down for about 10 minutes or until the apples are tender, stirring occasionally.

While the apples are cooking, make the custard. Whisk the eggs, flour, salt and sugar together, then stir in the buttermilk and vanilla. Spoon the cooked apple mixture into the pie crust, then pour the custard mixture over the apples.

I used a deep dish pie pan and measured the 5 cups of apple slices, and I still had quite a bit of the custard left over.

Bake the pie at 300 for 30 minutes, then sprinkle the streusel topping over the top and bake at 325 for 40 minutes more. When you pull the pie out to sprinkle the topping on, just pull the rack out but leave the pie there, don't pull it completely out of the oven. The custard did bake over a bit, so be sure and put your pan on a foil lined baking sheet to catch the drips. It smelled heavenly in the oven until the spilled custard started burning on the bottom of my oven. Yuck.

I forgot to take pictures until I pulled it out of the oven. Looks pretty good! Be sure and refrigerate the leftover pie.

Yep, pretty good! Not overly sweet, using a sweeter apple would help with that, and I think next time I will add more cinnamon. Let me know what you think!

Apples, Apples and More Apples

Autumn and apples just go together. Like pumpkins and Halloween. I don't think about apples all that much during the rest of the year, but when fall comes I can't seem to get enough. My dad loves anything made with apples, so this time of year is when I like to take him his favorite treats. During the summer I brought him freshly made apple fritters from the Farmers Market in Omaha's Old Market. They were made by a Greek family from Lincoln, they own a restaurant there called The Parthenon. I've never seen apple fritters that big before, when I brought one home it took us 3 days to eat the darned thing! I have lots of apple recipes, but this time I made an easy batch of applesauce because I was pressed for time this week, and that big bowl of apples sitting on my countertop were losing their shine and needed to be dealt with. I will happily share more apple recipes another day.

We had two apple trees in our backyard when I was growing up. Red Delicious. Our neighbors had an apple tree that supposedly grew seven varieties of apples. I don't know if it did or not, but it made for good conversation. It was fun to chomp into a fresh picked apple right off the tree.. sometimes we even ate the green ones. The worst part though, was when my dad mowed the lawn. He would always send us out to pick up the apples that dropped on the ground so he wouldn't chop them up with the mower. I hated picking up the nasty brown mushy rotten ones or finding one with a hidden treasure of either an icky, gross worm, or even worse, a honeybee. I always seemed to manage to find the ones with the bees, after which I would run into the house and have my mom take care of my latest beesting.. which turned out to be a sort of mixed blessing because it got me out of helping my brothers finish the work of picking up the fallen apples.

When my own kids were younger we would load up in the fall and head to one of the many orchards found in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. There was one over near Oakland, Iowa that I remember well. We would come home with 3 or 4 of those big brown grocery bags full of all kinds of different apples. I would then put on my Domestic Goddess hat, get out the canning supplies, and put up pints and quarts of applesauce, apple pie filling, apple jam, apple butter, and more applesauce. Okay, I confess I only attempted to make apple butter. I am many things, but patient is not one of them when I'm waiting for a big pot of applesauce to cook down into apple butter. Apple butter never really happened in my kitchen. I really tried though. Really. I love apple butter, I even put it in pumpkin pie sometimes.. but I am content to buy jars of thick, delicious apple butter made in someone else's kitchen.

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I don't really have a recipe for applesauce. I tried to find one online, but the ones I saw were for small batches, and I had a lot of apples.



So, I got out a big pot, and started to heat up some leftover apple cider. I had about 3/4 of a half gallon jug, so I dumped it all in. Water works just as well though. Be sure and use good cooking apples. I had McIntosh and Cortland apples, but Jonathans would work as well.

While the liquid is warming, cut your apples into quarters and remove the core. You can peel them too if you like, but I leave the peels on because I like the pinkish color the peels give the finished product. Add your quartered apples to the pot. Leaving the peels on is good to do also if you are making jam or jelly because apples have natural pectin.




Some of the apples disintigrated and some of them still clung to the peels even though they were nice and soft. This is what they looked like:



I used a large slotted spoon to move the cooked apples to a big bowl to cool. It was taking longer than I wanted for them to cool, so being the impatient person that I am, I dumped them all into a big, rectangular pan. They cooled much quicker in the big pan. When they were cool enough to handle, I removed the peels. Some of the peels were already separated, and some I had to scrape the pulp off. I had thrown in some Gala apples that I needed to use up, but ended up throwing them out because they didn't cook well. They were still hard after cooking, and I couldn't even get the peels off. Now, if you have one of those stainless steel food mills, you can just run everything through that and be done much more quickly. You will get a much smoother applesauce if you use one. Of course, then you have to clean that thing up. Good luck with that. I have become much less of a gadget person because I hate cleaning it all once I'm done with it.

I prefer a more rustic, chunky applesauce, so once I got the peels off, I squished up the remaining apples with my hands until I got the consistency I wanted.



The pan full of applesauce then went back into the big pot of apple cider cooking liquid, and I added some Splenda, a little sugar, and cinnamon. Taste your sauce, because the amount of sugar you use depends on the type of apples you have. My apples were sweeter, so I'm guessing I added about a cup of Splenda/sugar to the whole pot.



I turned the heat down to medium-low, and let the applesauce simmer down for a couple of hours to let some of the liquid cook off so it wouldn't end up a runny, drippy mess. If you are canning, at this point, you can fill your jars and proceed according to your instructions for water bath canning. I filled a few Ziploc containers and am storing them in the refrigerator.

My dad will be happy to see me tomorrow morning when I drop off another of his favorite apple treats! I love you Daddy.

"But Mom, We're Hungry!"

I’m not sure if my kids ever really said that to me, but it serves to illustrate what it was like in my house during the fall crafting season. I have been making fabulous candles in my home since somewhere in the beginning of this decade. At first it was just a few melting pots and votive molds, but over the years it has progressed to melting 25 pounds of wax at a time in two turkey roasters. I have cooked turkeys in my adult life, but I have never cooked a turkey in a turkey roaster… and I own two of them. I used to do at least 6 craft boutique shows in the fall with a group of friends. As we all got older, we got tired and the group eventually split up. Craft shows are very hard work, especially with candles because the boxes are heavy. There's the setting up, then standing on your feet for 6-7 hours, and then you pack up and haul everything back home. It can be frustrating because one day you can sell $700 and the next time you might be lucky to break $100. I'm not totally ready to give it up though, now that my knee is fixed I am back to doing 1-2 shows in the fall on my own.

My two sons were in high school when I started making candles, and I remember very clearly one crisp autumn day when I had made my favorite apple crisp recipe. The next day it still sat on the counter untouched, and the response I got when I mentioned that I had made apple crisp was; “Oh, we thought you were making candles.” Occasionally they would come home from school to some delicious aroma coming from the kitchen only to be left disappointed and salivating over several pots of melted wax, so I thought “But Mom, We’re Hungry” would be an appropriate title for this place where I will share my very favorite recipes for actual real food.

Back to the apple crisp… I got this recipe in 1989 from a friend at work named Bill. Bill was a respiratory therapist who also worked as a fire fighter. He brought the cherry version to work one night and I knew the topping would be perfect with apples, it was the best I had ever tasted. It had that perfect combination of brown sugar sweetness with a touch of spice, but not too crunchy. He sometimes made this for dessert at the fire station when it was his turn to help with the cooking. In my opinion the cherry version is a bit too sweet. I would suggest using a sugar-free pie filling if you try it. The apple crisp recipe started quite a stir a few years ago when I posted it on a discussion board where I was once a moderator. One poster complained that it needed something – she suggested adding that caramel stuff you get when you boil down a can of sweetened condensed milk. I replied that I wasn’t looking to induce a diabetic coma anytime soon. Really, don’t mess with this because it’s just that good. I like it with vanilla or cinnamon ice cream, but I am not above eating it for breakfast. Who can argue with fruit and oatmeal?

Thanks, Bill, wherever you are.


APPLE CRISP

(This makes an 8 x 8 square pan. I always double it.)

4 medium sliced tart apples. (I used to use all Jonathans, now I use a mixture. Granny Smiths hold their shape the best, Cortlands and McIntosh turned too mushy)

3/4 cup brown sugar, well packed

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup oats (either quick or whole oats, it doesn’t matter whatever you have on hand is fine)

3/4 tsp cinnamon (I prefer Penzey’s cinnamon, we’ll talk about Penzey’s Spices later!)

3/4 tsp nutmeg (you can also omit the spices and just use 1 1/2 tsp of Apple Pie Spice)

1/3 cup softened butter (if you double this, 2/3 cup = 1 stick + 3 Tbsp. Don't substitute, it has to be real butter!)

Peel, core and slice apples, place in buttered 8 x 8 square pan. Sometimes when I'm feeling a little bit spicy I will sprinkle some cinnamon over the sliced apples before I add the topping. Mix remaining ingredients (a pastry cutter works well for this) and sprinkle over the fruit.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

For CHERRY CRISP: Use 1 21-oz can cherry pie filling, and only add 2/3 cup brown sugar to the topping.