Spiced Cider

Back to apple recipes again. This is the perfect time to make this cider. It's warm, delicious, and is great for apples that you maybe picked at the peak of the harvest and are beginning to get soft. I used a variety of apples and it came out great, so use your favorite. This is a very easy recipe, but it takes a while, so if you have a slow cooker I recommend using it so you can walk away from it. If you don't have one (like me) this is easy enough to make on the stove.

Spiced Cider

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Total time: About 2 hours and 45 minutes including the straining time

Yield: About 6 cups (You can get more liquid out of this if you use cheesecloth or a nutmilk bag to squeeze the pulp at the end.

Ingredients

• 6 medium apples (I used 3 galas -- two were small, so I counted them together as one -- 2 honeycrisps, and 2 ida reds)
• 1 orange peel (I used the peel from a Cutie because they have almost no bitter, white pith)
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
• 4 cloves
• 4 allspice berries
• 6 cups water

Directions

1. Cut the apples into quarters and add to a large soup pot along with the other ingredients.
   
2. Bring the pot to a boil and hold it there for 30 minutes.
   
3. Cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 2 hours.
   
4. Mash up the apples with a potato masher. 
   
5. Strain the contents of the pot. I forgot to buy cheesecloth, so I just used an ordinary strainer and pressed the pulp with the back of a wooden spoon. If you have cloth and can squeeze the pulp dry, you'll likely get an extra 1/2 cup to a cup of cider in the end.
   
6. Enjoy warm. Pour leftovers into a jug or jar. This will keep in the fridge for about a week.
   

Soft Cheese and Watercress Sandwich

This recipe came out of a desire for something gooey. In High Rhulain, Brantalis ate a sandwich of soft cheese and watercress. He dunked it in pea and cabbage soup, which of course made me think of dunking my grilled cheese sandwiches into tomato soup. I didn't make the soup this time (cabbage is gross...), but I did make the sandwich and it came out rather beautifully. It could be argued that the open-face sandwich I made doesn't count as a "sandwich," so feel free to use two slices of bread.

Soft Cheese and Watercress Sandwich

Prep time: 1 minutes
Cook time: 4-8 minutes
Total time: 5-10 minutes

Yield: 1 sandwich

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp Brie or another soft cheese
• 1/4 cup watercress
• 1 or 2 slices whole wheat bread
• 1 tsp butter

Directions

1. Top the slice of bread with the brie. Mine was soft enough at room temperature to spread. If yours isn't, simply slice the cheese thinly and lie it over the bread.
   
2. Pluck the watercress leaves from the stems and place it on top of the cheese. 
   
3. If using two slices of bread, top with the second bread slice.
4. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat and add the sandwich.
   
5. Cook the sandwich for 4 minutes per slice of bread (flipping halfway through if you're using two slices) or until the bread is golden brown and crispy.
   
6. Enjoy your gooey, melty sandwich.

Baked Apples

Baked apples are a pretty common dessert this time of the year as the harvest comes around and people start craving warming spices (and the warmth from turning on their oven...). There are a lot of ways to make baked apples, but I got this idea from The Outcast of Redwall, when Sunflash was teaching the cook at Salamadastron what is good food:

"See this apple? Stuff the corehole with candied chestnuts and a dribble with honey, bake it in the oven, then serve it piping hot with meadowcream."

So that's just what I did. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did.

Baked Apples

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 50 minutes
Total time: 1 hour

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

• 4 apples of your favorite type (I used Ida Reds)
• 8 chestnuts (I found peel, roasted chestnuts in the Kosher section of my supermarket)
• Honey
• Cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Wash the apples thoroughly, then cut them horizontally in half, so you have a stem half and a bottom half.
   
3. Using a melon baller or a strong spoon, scoop out the core and seeds from the center of each apple.
   
4. Place the apples in a baking dish -- any size that will hold all of your apples.
5. Chop the chestnuts roughly, then fill each hole with a drop of honey and the chestnuts.
   
6. Sprinkle liberally with cinnamon.
   
7. Wrap the dish in aluminum foil. 
   
8. Bake for about 50 minutes, or until soft and fragrant.
   
9. Serve hot and, if desired, topped with meadowcream.

Apple Cake

The idea of apple cake came up in Mariel of Redwall. After some thought, I decided I wanted to make it in the style of a pineapple upside down cake. I used honeycrisps, which are super-sweet, and added very little sugar to the cake itself. If you use apples which are more tart, you may wish to increase the amount of sugar to compensate.

A note: I baked this in a 8x8-inch square pan because I wanted to cut it into many small, easily share-able pieces. If you are planning on only splitting this between a few people, though, feel free to bake it in a 9-inch round pan like a normal cake.

Apple Cake

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 45 minutes
Total time: 1 hour

Yield: 1 9-inch cake

Ingredients

• 2 honeycrisp apples
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/5 cups white whole wheat flour
• pinch salt
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Peel the apples and slice them thinly. I used my mandolin on the 1/6" setting. A knife would work well, too, just try to cut them as thinly as you can.
2. Arrange apple slices to cover the bottom of your pan. Dice any remaining slices.
   
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (baking soda through salt).
   
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (oil through vanilla).
   
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and gently mix until just combined. You should have a very thick dough.
   
6. Add in the chopped leftover apple.
   
7. Gently press the dough into the pan, taking care to not disrupt your apple slices.
   
8. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until golden brown. 
   
9. Let the cake cool (preferably on a rack) COMPLETELY (don't get impatient like me and do this too soon), then invert the cake onto a platter so the apple slices are on top.
10. Cut up the cake and enjoy! If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar or top with ice cream.

Raspberry Cream Turnovers

Raspberry cream turnovers were found in the book Taggeerung. For a long time, I debated between whether these were pastries with raspberries and cream or if they were pastries with some sort of raspberry-flavored cream. I went with the first idea, but maybe I'll revisit the second version when berry season comes around again... These turnovers make good use of the honeycream recipe I posted last week as well as any raspberry jam you may have made with the last of the berry season. Store-bought jam, of course, works just as nicely. I refrigerated my jam to make it stiff, which made this recipe easier.

Note: I don't recommend making the honeycream with chevre for this recipe, as goat cheese and raspberry aren't really the most compatible flavors. If you wanted to make these with fig jam, instead, that would be a different story...

Raspberry Cream Turnovers

Prep time: 20 minutes + time needed to make the dough
Cook time: 10 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes

Yield: 24 mini-turnovers

Ingredients

• Pastry Dough
• Honeycream (You'll need about a 1/4-1/2 cup) 
• 1/4 cup raspberry jam (I used my strawberry jam recipe and just changed fruits)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Roll the pastry out into a rectangular shape and cut into twenty-four triangles. (I rolled mine out to about 12 inches by 9 inches, cut it into 12 3x3 squares, then cut each square in half)
   
3. Coat the center of each triangle with the honeycream. See how mine kind of goes really close to the edge? Try not to do that. It makes things harder later.
   
4. Plop a little ball of jam into the center of each cream smear. Try not to let that get close to the edge, either.
   
5. Fold over all the triangles so the cream and jam is enclosed. If necessary, wet the edges of the dough to act as glue. You can see that some of mine aren't well sealed because the cream was too close to the edge. It's not disastrous, but it's definitely messier than it could have been.
   
6. Bake turnovers for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is nicely golden brown. These can definitely be made into fewer larger turnovers, but you may need to increase the cooking time.

PS:  I went apple picking this weekend and have a massive number of apples to cook with. Brace yourselves for several weeks of apple-related recipes. Happy fall.