Category Archives: Dessert

“We Plan Our Days, but…” and Apple Pudding

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Dessert, Life, Uncategorized

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As I was reading this rainy Saturday morning, I came upon this line from Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate,

We plan our days, but we don’t control them.

The sentence seemed to strike right at the moment in which we, and the whole wide world find ourselves in this moment of time.

We had so many plans for the coming weeks. I teach a children’s nature study at a local conservation area. We just had our first spring class…maybe our last for a while.

wonderbugs ponds1

I was excited about attending training early in April to become a Xerces Ambassador and help educate citizens about the importance of saving our pollinators. That training has been postponed until at least June.

We were planning on traveling to Texas to see a bucket list item…Texas Bluebonnets. That trip has been put on hold.

Meetings, church services, get-togethers among friends have been cancelled.

And Jim and I find ourselves in that vulnerable over 60 crowd. So what to do?

The simple answer is…go outside! There is no virus in the woods, nor on the prairie, or by a stream. So we go out and look for the reassurance that a new season is coming. We find those signs for which we are searching, and it lifts our spirits, clears our minds, drives away despair, puts smiles on our faces…and tires us out for a good night’s sleep!

We begin in our own backyard…

The maple trees are beginning to bloom…
as are the forsythia.
My Blue Flag iris is up…
and my New England aster.
Our rosebush is anxious to get going…

But the very best find in the yard, one rainy afternoon is our first daffodils…

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Late in the evening, the full moon out our back porch shone through the thickening clouds long enough for me to get a picture with my camera’s moon setting…

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We traveled to a local state park where we could see green coming back with almost every step we took…

At the water’s edge, life is re-emerging.
The beavers and the turtles are active
The Lake at Montauk State Park

Just before we were all told to stay away from places where we might encounter large groups of people, we visited one of our favorite places, Shaw Nature Reserve, near St. Louis.

It was a very cold and very gray day, but we enjoyed every single second of our time outside. We were very lucky to have made the decision to visit on Sunday, because on Monday the reserve was closed until further notice to protect its workers as well as its many visitors. We had the park nearly to ourselves, and what a joy!

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We saw signs of things to come, even tough it was so very cold…

These Wake Robin will bloom in the next month. I hope the park opens again before then!
Found these by the pond.

I was really excited by finding our real reason for visiting. Each year, Shaw has literally thousands of daffodils that bloom throughout the park. The daffodils come up in the fields, they bloom on the hillsides, and they sneak out from within thick brush.They are amazing when in full bloom, and we caught them just as their bloom was beginning. The even more amazing thing this spring is that the park conducted a controlled burn. Yet, the daffodils came up…and they are blooming, even those that were temporarily damaged by the burn. Yup, there is always hope for better things to come!

The world is in crisis mode, I know, but going outside, smelling the fresh air, seeing new life, makes me sure we will weather this storm just as we have so many others.

Baking While Home-centric!

Being at home, with only parks and woods, forests and streams to visit gives one a lot of time to finish projects that have been on the shelf, sometimes, for years. It gives me time to clean…well, if I want to. And it gives me time to play with a new kitchen tool I got for Valentine’s Day and search out some new recipes in cookbooks I have wanted to explore for a long time.

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My new spiralizer, peeler, slicer!

I checked the apples that we picked last fall, and found the few we have left to still be in very good shape. So I checked for a good, new apple recipe. I found the perfect one in a book I bought from our church group some thirty years ago. The book is called Heritage of Cooking: A Collection of Recipes from East Perry County, Missouri. That is a long name given to a cookbook of favorite recipes from a group of Lutheran churches in east central Missouri. They are good old German recipes, from old German Lutheran families, like mine. This apple pudding is absolutely delicious!

Going with the theme of the present moment to do with what you have, I used some coconut sugar (not sure why I had that!) for the sauce in place of the brown sugar which I did not have, adding a half tablespoon of molasses. I am not sure if that is what gave it its deep brown color, but it was really delicious.

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Apple Pudding

Ingredients

  • 2 c. apples, peeled and cored
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 1c. flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 c. chopped walnuts (Missouri is famous for its black walnuts)

For the sauce:

  • 1/2 c. brown sugar
  • 1/2 c. white sugar
  • 1 c. water
  • 1/4 c. butter
  • 2 Tbsp. flour
  • 1 tsp. vanilla

Directions

Allow sugar and apples to stand until sugar is dissolved. Add egg and beat. Stir dry ingredients together and mix with apples and sugar. Add walnuts. Bake in greased 9″x 9″ pan for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.

Note: You can double the amount of apples to make the pudding more moist. I used about 3 cups of apples.

For the sauce, bring sugars, flour, and water to a slow boil until it is slightly thickened and glossy (about 10 minutes). Add butter and vanilla and stir until smooth.

Stay safe, and enjoy!

 

Our Own Apples From Our Own Yard…One Colonial Dessert

24 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by in Breakfast, Dessert, Egg Dish, Food, Photography

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A couple activities came together nicely for me this week…

The first happened around our apple tree…

Many years ago, one of our sons gave us an apple tree, something we had wanted for a very long time. I am not exaggerating when I say many years ago, for it has to be at least fifteen. For the first ten years we had never once seen an apple on that tree. It blossomed beautifully each and every year, but produced no apples. Then we learned it takes two apple trees to produce apples, so we purchased another tree of a different variety of apple. And we waited…and waited…

Until three year ago when, finally we found apples developing on the original tree. We were so excited, and could hardly wait to eat the very first apples from our own backyard.

We left on vacation, and when we returned, every single one of those apples was gone…seriously, every single one. I blamed raccoons, squirrels, opossums, deer (remember, I live in the city), and even wondered if there were not some hungry teenagers lurking around in the dark enjoying our anticipated harvest while we were away. For two more years, we had the same result…even if we did not go out of town.

Then, this year, the trees blossomed, apples appeared…

and apples remained. I wanted so badly to pick those apples, but I waited. Finally, I went out and picked apples. I was willing to share…I brought some into the house, and left a large number, particularly those high up in the tree that I could not reach, for any creatures that had enjoyed our apples in the past.

The apples were not the most beautiful, but they were ours, and they were absolutely delicious…

Now on to the second part of my story. Every couple of years, I get the urge to go through every item we own. I am supposed to be down-sizing when I do this, not sure how successful I am at that aspect of my sorting.

As I was going through all the cookbooks I have purchased at different historical sites across the country and abroad, I came across a small book I purchased at one of the sites. It brought back so many memories of trips we have taken with our children and our grandchildren.

A spread of food items at Colonial Williamsburg. You can see our granddaughter eyeing them, wishing she might just have some.
A typical colonial herb garden
Ladies enjoying tea in the garden as they discuss the events of the day.

One of the recipes in the book was for Apple Tansey. I thought how fun it would be to make something from the apples in our own yard, just as colonial Americans made dishes from the apples in their own yards.

The recipe calls for three pippins, so I did some research…

The Algonquin Indians introduced apples to European colonists living in Quebec. We are not sure about the variety of those first apples. A pippin is a variety of apple that was cultivated in the American colonies, and still is today. It is apparently not the best eating apple, but makes very good apple cider.

The recipe for Apple Tansey is written in paragraph form, so I have tried to put it in some kind of acceptable recipe format. I also determined some of the measurements myself, since some of the items were not written with regard to amount.

It was delicious! Though meant to be a dessert after a family meal in colonial times, it made a great breakfast for us…especially after we drizzled it with some authentic Vermont maple syrup…

Fresh apples frying in butter in a cast iron frying pan.

Not the prettiest presentation, but I put it on a fancy heritage plate…and Jim was dutifully impressed!

All in all it was a great week…getting our own apples, sorting through the moments of our lives, enjoying an old fashioned dessert on an old fashioned plate, in our almost one hundred year old house. Life can be so much fun sometimes!

Apple Tansey

A great apple dessert or breakfast entree.

This recipe is adapted from “Colonial Food”, by Ann Chandonnet. It was published in 2013 by Shire Publications in Great Britain.

Ingredients

  • 3 pippins (cooking apples of your choice)
  • 2-3 Tbsp. butter
  • 6 Tbsp. half and half
  • 1 Tbsp. sugar
  • 4 beaten eggs
  • dash of nutmeg

Directions

  1. Core the apples, peel , and slice them round in thin slices.
  2. Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over medium high heat.
  3. Fry the apples in the melted butter until soft, but not browned.
  4. Mix together the 4 eggs, sugar, half and half, and nutmeg.
  5. Pour the egg mixture over the apples and let them fry until set, lowering the heat if you need to in order that it does not get too brown on the bottom.. Lift the sides of the eggs, allowing the uncooked portions to slide to the bottom and cook.
  6. Turn out onto a plate. Sprinkle with sugar and serve.
  7. Drizzle with maple syrup for an added treat!

Enjoy!