Today I am looking out on a winter wonderland! We are in the midst of a blizzard that has dumped an amazing amount of snow as far as the eye can see. One of those days to sit by the fire with a hot cup of tea and a slice of warm Apple cranberry bread.
We still have apples in the refrigerator from our fall harvest which are in surprisingly good shape – the one I munched on while making this bread wasn’t fresh from the tree, but still crisp and sweet. We also were given a large quantity of cranberries from a local bog, so it seemed like a good use of the two to put them together in a quick bread. We are always looking for different morning snack ideas to serve at our community work time break. I tried a couple of different recipes and actually left the peels on the Apple’s to give the breads a little more texture. Here is one variety that I thought the most flavorful and moist.
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Apple Cranberry Bread
SERVINGS1loaf
|
COOK TIME45-55minutes |
PREP TIME |
READY IN10minutes |
Ingredients
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degree F. Grease bottom only of an 8 x 4 inch loaf pan
- In large bowl, mix 3/4 cup sugar, the oil and egg.
- Stir in apple, flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir in cranberries.
- Spoon batter into pan.
- In small bowl, mix 1 Tablespoon sugar and the cinnamon; sprinkle over batter.
- Bake 45 to 55 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
- Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on wire rack before slicing.
Optional Glaze
- For glaze, combine confectioners sugar and half and half or milk, drizzle over bread.
What says Autumn more than apples? I still remember apple picking as a child — and all of the smells, tastes and visual stimuli that went with it… the drive to Hadley through the Notch, the trees a riot of color, the smell of leaves crunching underfoot and of ripening apples. The first bite sitting at the top of a tree, tart, juicy sweetness. We are harvesting our apple trees, a few at a time. The early apples are sweet, tart, and super crunchy, perfect for any baking one would want to do. I love apple pie. Also like apple dumplings, but I don’t fancy the whole apple wrapped in crust. So I thought of a marriage of the two — cinnamon sweet apple chunks bundled in pie crust! Little individual dumplings that anyone could eat warm from the oven. So here is what I came up with.
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Apple Bundles
SERVINGS5bundles
|
COOK TIME14-16minutes |
PREP TIME |
READY IN1hour |
Ingredients
Instructions
- Mix together flour, sugar and salt.
- Add butter and cut in with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles course meal and the pieces of butter are pea-sized.
- Add water as needed and mix with a fork until dough holds together and you can form into a ball.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
For the filling
- Peel and cut apples into 1/2 inch pieces.
- In a large pan, over medium heat, melt butter and add apples. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring.
- Add sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and cook a few more minutes. Set aside.
To make bundles
- Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- On a floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness in a rough rectangular shape. Using a sharp knife, cut dough into 4 inch squares.
- Place dough squares on prepared pans. Spoon 1 Tablespoon to 1 1/2 Tablespoons in center of dough square.
- Bring corners to center, pinching along seams. Brush top of each bundle, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (last 2 ingredients combined).
- Bake for 14 to 16 minutes or until crust is golden. Can be served with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream.
I am a cold weather girl. Yesterday was one of those crisp fall days, and I was actually cold! It’s a promise of things to come — apples being picked and pumpkins rolling in — so I do look forward to it. I love autumn! This year we have a bumper crop of pears. Last year was plum year — we had hundreds of pounds of the purple beauties. I don’t think we have as many pears, but it is a respectable harvest, enough that one starts wondering how many pears a person can eat? I love pears off of the tree, and I love to make upside cakes, poached pears, and pear muffins…. I also love chutney, so I decided to make up a few jars of a fiery pear one. Perfect for pork, or ham, turkey or chicken. Great in a ham and cheese sandwich on the griddle, or in the oven. But be warned — this one has a kick!
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Golden Pear Chutney
SERVINGS
|
COOK TIME1hour |
PREP TIME |
READY IN |
Ingredients
Instructions
- Cook the pears in enough water to cover until they are medium soft.
- Drain, saving the water, then make a syrup of the water in which the pears were cooked and the brown sugar by boiling in a large nonreactive pot until thick, about 20 to 30 minutes.
- While the syrup is boiling, add the remaining ingredients to the pears, then mix everything together and cook for about 30 minutes or until the raisins are softened, the onions are transparent, and the chutney has a good thick consistency.
- Transfer to sterilized jars and seal, process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, or store in refrigerator.
- (Quatre – Epices: equal amounts of white pepper, nutmeg, ground cloves and ground ginger. Cinnamon can also be added, but for this recipe I left it out.
It is now Lent. And I should be writing about very Lenten things like soups and bread, not desserts. That will follow later in the season. I’m hoping to do my favorite beef mushroom barley soup in a couple of weeks. So even though a lot of us give up desserts for Lent, I’d like to share my recipe for bread pudding, which can double as a great and satisfying breakfast. It is so wonderful served up warm with whipped cream, or cut into shapes to serve as individual desserts, or as a great snack in the middle of the afternoon. I wanted to make it the way I remember us making it in the early days of the sisterhood, which was to mix up the cubes of bread with butter and cinnamon sugar before adding the eggs and milk or cream. We also used whatever bread was leftover and saved — white and whole wheat, rye… you name it when making the bread pudding. I do love a homemade white bread for this, and especially something like brioche, which I will sometimes make up in large batches and have in the freezer for this sort of use. But that did not happen for this bread pudding, so I was really happy to find a loaf of the cinnamon swirl bread that we gave as gifts for Christmas! But you can use just about any firm white bread for this.
Bread Pudding
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Bread Pudding
SERVINGS12servings
|
COOK TIME45 - 50mins. |
PREP TIME |
READY IN |
Ingredients
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Butter a 9 X 13 casserole.
- Place bread cubes in a large bowl, add melted butter and mix well.
- Mix together 1/2 cup of sugar and cinnamon, and add to bread cube mixture again mixing well, so all the cubes are coated.
- In another bowl, whisk together 1 cup sugar, milk, eggs, cream and vanilla, then stir into bread cube mixture.
- Pour all into prepared pan.
- Top with additional cinnamon sugar.
- Bake in 350 oven about 45 to 50 minutes and pudding is puffed and golden.
- Cool slightly. Can be served warm, or chilled and served cold.
- Top with whipped cream if desired.
Friday morning is muffin day at the convent. Walking back from church to the refectory for breakfast I try to guess what kind it will be today. Our muffin baking sisters excel at so many varieties it is hard to predict which type will be next. Last week they surprised us with the best banana nut muffins I have ever tasted. We haven’t had their poppy seed or those wholesome raisin bran ones in a while, both of which are big favorites so we could be having one of those today. But as I open the convent door and get a whiff of fragrant spices I know it is neither of the above. I’ll have to guess again!
We like to do a lot of seasonal decorating in and around the convent, mainly using what is produced on our grounds and in our gardens. Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving always feature an abundance of pumpkins — but now that fall is behind us and it’s decor has been remembered, we have started decorating for Advent. What is going to happen to the leftover pumpkins, many of which were still very robust and healthy? They have been sitting in the back stairwell of the convent kitchen waiting there to find out. Well yesterday some kitchen sisters chopped, cooked and mashed them up to be frozen for future use.
Aha! Is that what I smell? Have these pumpkins been turned into a heart warming breakfast for us this morning? Yes! Indeed they have. Our resourceful muffin baking sisters have just created a prize winner. Let’s name it “The Spicy Pumpkin Streusel Muffin” — absolutely delicious! Those chubby pumpkins could not have had a happier ending.Apple Streusel Pumpkin Muffins
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Apple Streusel Pumpkin Muffins
SERVINGS12muffins
|
COOK TIME |
PREP TIME |
READY IN25 - 30mins. |
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat oven 375 degrees. Grease muffin tins or line with paper.
- In a bowl combine flour, sugar and cinnamon.
- Cut in butter; mix until coarse and crumbly.
- Set aside.In another bowl combine flour, sugar, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt.
- Make a well in the center.
- In another bowl combine eggs, pumpkin and oil; stir just until blended.
- Add apples and blend well.
- Add to dry ingredients; stirring just until moist.
- Spoon batter into prepared muffin tin, filling three-quarters full.
- Sprinkle with topping.Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Makes about one dozen.
Apples are coming in off the trees by the crate-load. What is more quintessentially autumn than plucking an apple off the tree and enjoying it right there in the fall sunshine? I used to go apple picking as a child, and in those days we were allowed to climb the trees to pick. I can still remember the sensation of picking an apple at the top of the tree (or as top as I got) and then biting into the white sweet-sour juiciness. Not something one easily forgets! Well, I don’t climb trees anymore, but I do still pick apples (luckily our trees are dwarfed) and one of my favorite things to do with apples is an upside-down cake. I love upside-down cakes, and I think I have made them out of almost every kind of fruit that one can. Pear, plum, pineapple, rhubarb to mention a few. But nothing beats apple! I like to do this in a cast iron skillet — I think it tastes better, and it’s easy!
Apple Upside Down Cake
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Apple Upside Down Cake
SERVINGS
|
COOK TIME20 to 25mins. |
PREP TIME |
READY IN5 to 7mins. |
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees
- In a 9 to 10 inch skillet, melt the 1 3/4 sticks butter over low heat.
- Add the 3/4 sugar and stir, then place apple slices, wedge side down in the pan.
- No need to pack tightly, but don’t leave gaps.
- Allow this to cook over low heat while making batter.
- In a bowl, measure out flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon and set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat 1 stick of butter and 2/3 c sugar until light and fluffy.
- Mix in vanilla and eggs.
- Add sour cream and mix well.
- Gradually add flour mixture until just combined.
- Remove skillet from heat.
- Spoon batter over the top, then spread gently so batter is evenly distributed.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until cake is golden and bubbly.
- Allow the cake to sit in the skillet for 5 to 7 minutes, then invert onto a serving plate.
- Best served warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.