apples Tag

Apple CHips Yesterday, I posted about root vegetable chips. Today, the chips are made of fruit. Spring is not the best time of year for apples. While the produce section boasts apples year round, by the time winter is over, the Macs are long gone and...

Spring arrived this week, slipping in quietly when we were distracted by the wind. Winter dragged its ungracious feet as it shuffled out the door.  As the last of the snow melted, a bland, brown, monochromatic world emerged outside my window. The lawn was brown. The...

These Streusel-Topped Hasselback Apples are like a Dutch apple pie without the fuss of pastry. A large, firm, sweet apple like Honeycrisp delivers best results but Mustu or Golden Delicious work well too. ...

These are Mutsus, also known as Crispins. They’re firm and semi-tart, and have white flesh. They’re also Ontario’s only truly green apple. I learned this last weekend while I traipsed about the orchard at Nature’s Bounty  on a tour. In the drizzle. On the other side of...

This recipe is a game changer. It turns baklava into a no-fail dessert for two types of Baklava Balkers — those who think phyllo is too hard to work with, and those who think the classic Greek dessert is too sweet. I’ve blogged about working with phyllo...

To help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the McIntosh apple, I'm taking part in The Ontario Apple Growers' challenge. They're looking for the best candy apple recipe -- ever. After careful consideration, a bit of testing and a second-degree burn to my index finger, I have determined that caramel-coated apples are the Kobayashi Maru of fun food. For those who don't know their Star Trek (or fail to get their sci-fi references second-hand from The Big Bang Theory) this is geek-speak for "no-win scenario." Since I was more a Caramel Apple Kid than one who liked to crack her teeth on flaming red, rock hard candy apples, I decided to play with a grown-up salted caramel version, maybe with a sprinkling of crystallized ginger for those who want a bit o' zing along with their sweet & salty. How'd it go? You be the judge. Here's my enthusiastic set-up shot. Imagine the Macs dipped in obedient caramel. Here's the reality.
Don't get me wrong, I like pancakes. But sometimes the expression "Flat as a pancake," describes my enthusiasm for this dish. Unadorned, they're pallid, uneven, and large-pored. This describes my skin without make-up. It's not something you should be serving guests before noon. Oh, sure I can drizzle them with maple syrup, but sometimes you need to shake things up a bit. It's apple season and since I put apples in the pancakes, why not put apples on the pancakes as well. The results?  A pan of goopy, butterscotchy fruit that cooked in the time it takes to make a supporting batch of flap jacks. So decadent and sweet, it's enough to make the maple syrup sulk.
Winter in Ontario. It either comes in cloudy grey lined with depressing slush or dazzling blue edged with blinding white snow. But there's a new colour this season. Red.Very fitting for a Canadian-grown fruit. These Red Prince apples are a new variety grown just a couple hours away from me -- in ski country no less. Here the Jonathan meets the Golden Delicious. And this is truly a prince of an apple. You can bake with it, cook with it or just eat it as is. Me? I decided to try something I'd never done before. I dried mine. Pretty, aren't they? The resulting dried apples are at once sweet and tart. A bit like a dried cranberry. Only without the added sugar. The brilliant red skin even makes them look a bit like cranberries. But the tiny blocks shown above are just plain old apples, slowly dried in the oven. They're so tasty I had to stop myself for gobbling them by the handful.

This is another photo I didn't take.  And not because my roasted chicken didn't turn out beautifully. It did. I just didn't have the time or patience to do a photo shoot. I give full credit to James Ingram, not only for his camera skills but...

Pastry is fussy, cake requires precise measurement, fish over-cooks in a flash, but soup? Soup is incredibly forgiving. And it's the perfect way to  handle the abundance of fall. Got too many carrots? Make soup. More cauliflower than you know what do do with? Soup. Your...