Easy crock pot applesauce

Yesterday, Stenni and I made some awesome crockpot applesauce with the remaining apples from our family apple-picking excursion on October 9th (which was also, incidentally, my 9th wedding anniversary. Woohoo!). We did polish off all of the apples, but don't worry: I went up to NY state and bought another 1/2 bushel today! So, more applesauce making is on the horizon for us. Anyway, I didn't know crockpot applesauce would be so easy. I usually make regular applesauce but then have to be home all day, stirring and watching and making sure I don't burn my house down. This stuff? I plopped the apples and accoutrements in the crockpot, turned it on and then stirred it like, 3 times (when I remembered). Awesome. Anyways, wanna make some? Of course you do! So here's how:

Get a fairy/farmhand helper to pick a bunch of apples. Or buy them at the store.

Then you have some apples. Like 8 or 9 should work. They don't have to come from a basket.

Peel, core, and slice them up until you have maybe 8 cups or so.

Wash a lemon really well, then take off a little of the peel with a vegetable peeler. 1 or 2 strips will do. Put that in the pot too.

Add the juice of 1/2-1 lemon. (See note at bottom on the sweet/tart continuum and personal taste.) 

Here are your other players. I added 1 T. cinnamon and about 4-5 T. agave nectar. You can use honey or brown sugar instead, or leave it as it.

Put that all up in the crockpot and mix it. Add like 1/2 a cup of water or so. Lid it up and crank it to high. Cook it for 5-6 hours or until you don't even have to mash it. You'll know when it's all good because it will look like:

THIS! SUCCESS! Super delicious success. 

Sweet/Tart Continuum and Personal Taste 

*A little note on the lemon peel, lemon juice, and sweeteners: They're all optional. I used mutsu/crispin apples, which are a little tart anyway, and then added the juice of a whole lemon and 2 strips of lemon peel. My applesauce is delicious but a little on the tart side. If you use sweeter apples, you may want to use less sweetener. If you are using tarter apples, you might use the juice of only 1/2 a lemon (or even less if you want), and/or omit the lemon peel. It's up to you, because only you know how tart you like your applesauce. Maybe you like it sweeter. So add more sweetener. Also, you don't need all that cinnamon if you don't like cinnamon. I love it, so I added a lot (hence the very dark color of the finished product). Like I said, up to you.*

What to do with all your leftover matzo

Matzo gets a bad rap as being bland and not really good for anything, except suffering through during Passover. I totally disagree. It's an awesome vehicle for spreads and dips of all kinds (I can't even tell you how many nights I come out to the kitchen in the wee small hours to find hubs chonking on some matzo covered in peanut butter, but the answer is most. And the kitchen floor is covered in crumbs almost every morning). It's also a good replacement for those too-salty and too-buttery crackers that work great with some things and not so great with others, where regular crackers might overwhelm the flavor of an accompaniment.

Anyway, I had these wonderful caramel-and-chocolate-covered matzos at a breakfast I attended this past Easter, and I knew I had to make them! Especially since I have like 5 lbs. of matzoh sitting on Stenni's big girl bed with all of the miscellaneous Easter candy, planing supplies, empty hanging baskets, etc.  

I found this recipe at Zoe Bakes. It's pretty much perfect and was easy enough for me to make last minute for a Relay for Life meeting I had like an hour and a half later. The picture below is less than half of what the recipe makes... the ladies at my meeting ate it right up, quite literally, and none of them could believe it was made from the same matzo that they had passed up at the supermarket after-Passover clearance sales the week earlier. So this picture represents what was leftover for our household...and I can say that there's not nearly as much left this morning!

The recipe itself? Crazy easy. Adapted for my non-kosher, extra-chocolate-loving kitchen.

4-6 plain matzos (or whatever fits on 1 really big or two regular-sized baking sheets)
1 cup butter (I like salted, but the original calls for unsalted. so sue me.)
1 cup brown sugar
1-ish cup of chocolate chips (again, the real recipe calls for half that, but who are we kidding? also, you can use broken chocolate bunnies. no one will care)
extras: including but not limited to mini marshmallows, reese's pieces, broken pieces of salted pretzels, crushed malted milk balls and/or robin's eggs, etc.

• Cover a baking sheet (or the two) entirely with foil and then parchment (things will get very sticky). Preheat oven to 350. 
• Cook butter and sugar over medium-high heat for a few minutes (like 3-6 minutes). It will get bubbly. That is awesome. Just keep stirring it the whole time. You totally don't want it to burn. When it's done it should all be one delicious caramelly thick liquid, with all of the sugar dissolved and all of the butter melted and incorporated.
• Pour the caramel over the matzos and spread it around to coat it evenly. You want to try to cover every little bit so everything has crunchy caramel goodness when you bite it!
• Bake for 8 minutes in preheated oven. Then rotate the pans, switch to different racks, and bake another 5-7 minutes. You want gorgeously brown bubbling caramel when they're done.
• Remove the pans from the oven (you can turn the oven off now) and top the matzos with the plain chocolate. Give it like 5 minutes just sitting on your counter, absorbing the heat, and then spread the melted chocolate around so it's nice and smooth and covers every last bit of the matzo and caramel. 
• Give the chocolate a few moments to set, then toss on those extras. The original recipe calls for things like toasted nuts and sesame seeds and coconut, and those things are really nice, but I had a ton of extra candy lying around so that's what I used. Also I love candy. Deal with it. If nothing's turning solid, pop it in the fridge for a while just to set up.
• Break into bite-sized (or face-sized) pieces. Eat. 

The End.

Linking up this morning at 

(So go visit!)

Happy Weekend, all!!!

FOOOOOD, glorious food (that I'm too lazy to make)

I am having some food-related issues lately. Like as in I'd like to eat everything but I don't really feel like cooking. Baking, maybe, but I can't live on muffins and sourdough bread. Well I could, but it wouldn't be pretty and I'd also have to start living in my yoga pants.

In trying to "research" and help myself, I decided to seek out a few new recipes to shake it up a bit. So here are some food-related tidbits for y'all: 

Here's a list of 50-something healthy meals you can make in less than 15 minutes. Totally beats crappy canned soup.

If you're feeling adventurous, why not try these cauliflower pizza bites?



Do you know about Joy the Baker? Because you totally should. Her blog is always in inspiration to try new recipes! I have made several of her recipes throughout the past year and all have been super incredibly delicious, I promise. Plus I have a huge girl crush on her.

Speaking of girl crushes, one of my BFFLs and I are going to try something new on this blog. She is of Middle Eastern descent and sometimes asks for a few pointers on preparing non-Middle Eastern recipes. Since she lives like an hour away and I only get to see her about once a month (and when we do get together we usually focus on hookahs, celebrity gossip and truth-or-dare without any dares and totally don't want to fixate on cooking), we are going to try to arrange bloggy cooking tutorials for a few recipes. We will be starting this month!

So after all that "research" I still need to go figure out what I'm making for dinner before my hungry hubs walks through the door, which is in about 15 minutes. Wish me luck!

An old-fashioned Christmas: Family Baking Time

We had to make 7+ dozen cookies for the cookie exchange the other day. Here's how we did it: multi-generational family baking time. This worked out well because my mom needed to use my mixer for her yummy red velvet cookies and I needed to use her baby-wrangling skills while I made my pfefferneusse. Stenni helped us both, and, with Christmas carols playing in the background, we got to share some pre-Christmas quality time.

Does this mean my baking is done? Not a chance! But this was super fun!

An Old-Fashioned Christmas: Snow Ice Cream

I love it when it snows, but I loathe the snow itself. I usually don't even step one toe out the door if I don't have to. My driveway and stairs to the lake turn into icy death slopes and my road doesn't ever get plowed. It's not only dangerous, it's terrifying. The idea of winter sports is completely unappealing to me. Personally, I like to snuggle inside by the fire with a good book and comfy socks and a heavy sweater and a cup of tea. Or scotch. Whatever.

But toddlers like snow. Ugh.

So that means I need to dig into my mom bag of tricks and do my thing to make it special for Stenni and not completely ruin the fun snow time that she deserves.

I tried sledding. We go every time it snows, and she loves it. And I get an extra workout. But really, it doesn't do it for me. But she likes it. We make snow angels. We made a snowman but by the time I went to get his accessories and Stenni's sled, she had already spear-tackled him to the ground. Good stuff.

But Stenni's number one fun time thing to do in the the snow? Eat it. Yeah, really. She loves to eat snow off of all available surfaces in our yard. I don't get it, but I figured I could work with it.

If you haven't already made snow ice cream, you are not living. Its worth stepping out your front door to scoop up some snow even if you're winter-phobic like me.

You really only need a few things:

• a big bowl
• a big spoon
•  a lot of snow
•  a can of sweetened condensed milk
•  some vanilla extract

Scoop up the snow into the bowl. Pack it down a little. I use my huge babka-making aluminum bowl, but just use the biggest one in your kitchen. A soup pot wouldn't be a bad idea. 
Then mix in the sweetened condensed milk. I usually use between 1/2 to just shy of a full can. Use enough vanilla for flavor but not enough to melt everything. Stir very well. Like, very well. You don't want to eat a chunk of pure vanilla extract ice. Not cool. Use a mixer if you want. It's prob a good idea to make it nice and smooth like actual ice cream.

Then eat it all up. Share it if you have to. Easy as pie. Plus, you get to stay inside all nice and toasty, which is a huge plus!

Round up the usual suspects and use your hugest bowl.

Remember to mix very well! Yours should look better than mine!

And the cookie exchange recipe will be...

Pfeffernuesse! They are small, spicy German Christmas cookies, and they are scrumptious.
I looked on Pinterest, allrecipes, and a million other sites that I usually go to for inspiration, and I found a ton of good ideas, but unfortunately no great ones, and none that seemed easy enough to bake 7 or 8 dozen of with a toddler hanging off my leg. But then I looked in one of my favorite cookbooks (after I looked in about 10 others first), Blue Ribbon Recipes: 693 Award-Winners from America's State and County Fairs, and I found the perfect recipe for Pfeffernuesse. And then I changed it just a little anyway. In my defense, I really couldn't find ground cloves, and didn't know how to grind the whole cloves I had without a spice or coffee grinder. I also didn't have cardamom or white pepper, so the spices are all slightly adjusted, but the cookies turned out fantastic. Not necessarily authentic, but tasty. Word of warning: store these in an airtight container once they are cooled, as they tend to get hard quickly. My handy dandy 1960 Betty Crocker picture cookbook says that you can store a wedge of apple in with them to keep them fresh and mellow the spice out a little, but in my house they didn't last that long.

3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger, plus a pinch
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp black pepper
1 cup room temperature butter
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
confectionery sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease cold baking sheets.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.
In a large bowl of electric mixer cream butter and white sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in molasses and egg, scraping sides of mixer bowl constantly. Add flour mixture 1/3 at a time, and beat on low speed until a thick dough forms.
Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator (NOT FREEZER) for half an hour.
Roll dough into 1-inch balls (or smaller, depending on how big you'd like your cookies; they don't really spread almost at all), and place on prepared baking sheets.
Bake 11-14 minutes. Cool on wire racks and sprinkle with confectionery sugar while still warm.

Serve. Eat. Good with German beer.

3 words: pumpkin. mousse. cheesecake.

 

Thanksgiving was awesome, and not just because we got to see a ton of family. In the morning, hubs and I ran a 5K, and my brother-in-law came along for good measure (but totally smoked our time by like 13 minutes. ouch). he and his wife came back to my in-laws, where we picked up stenni and headed home to cook. for dinner, my folks, my sister and my in-laws came by, then later on my grandparents and hubs' cousin and his wife came by for a bit. it was a nice, steady crowd of people all day, and even though i completely forgot about the cranberry sauce and neglected to put out the napkins until we were halfway through our meal, it was really, really perfect.
but like most things in life, the best part was dessert. ok, maybe dessert was the second best part. the best part was hubs carving a turkey in his lederhosen apron with his beer stein oven mitts. for serious. don't  believe me? see for yourself:



At any rate, what I want to talk about right now is dessert. I wanted to add an extra dessert to the menu just in case we had extra people show up, and I'm pretty glad I did. But it had to be something ridiculously easy, because I had enough on my plate that day (so punny, right?). I wanted something pumpkin. But I also thought people might riot if there was no cheesecake of any type on the table. (My family is a riotous bunch.) Hubs said, "so why don't you make a pumpkin cheesecake?" and I almost made out with him on the spot because of his brilliance. after looking through a million cookbooks and websites, I found this one at skinnytaste and altered it very slightly to fit my needs and use what I already had in the kitchen so I didn't have to go out food shopping 100 more times. And it was awesome. oh, did i mention i had dieters coming over and that a slice is only 6 weight watchers points plus points? because it is, and that rocks. here you go, friends:

Pumpkin Mousse Cheesecake

• 1 8-oz tub reduced-fat whipped cream cheese or neufchatal
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree (a little more is just fine if you want more pumpkin flavor, but don't go crazy because it'll make it heavier and more pie-like than fluffy)
• 1 tsp really good vanilla (or, if you really want, skip the vanilla and add about 1 Tbsp. of dark rum. it ups the spice factor but probably the WW points as well. but since I don't count points, I also don't care and I really like rum)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves, if you're too cheap to shell out $6 for like an ounce of pumpkin pie spice, like I am)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, unpacked
  
• 8 oz-tub of fat free whipped topping, thawed
  
• 9-inch reduced fat Graham Cracker Crust

In a large bowl using an electric mixer, whip together cream cheese, pumpkin, vanilla, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and brown sugar for a 4-5 minutes, until super fluffy. Add whipped topping and whip until smooth. Spoon mixture into pie crust and chill for a few hours until firm.

Original Recipe: Pumpkin Spice No-Bake Cheesecake @ Gina's Skinny Recipes

What was your favorite recipe this Thanksgiving? Didja try anything new? Tell me tell me tell me!

I finally got my blue ribbon!

This, my friends, is what excellence looks like. No, but seriously. This babka is totally excellent. So excellent, in fact, that it took first place for yeast breads at the NJ state fair. Mind you that this is my first blue ribbon in the baking competition. The black pepper pound cake, which I think should have taken the top prize, came in #2 for pound cakes (a surprisingly competitive category). Also a collage I made a while back was a blue ribbon winner. Hubs did very well in the open agriculture show too, with several "excellent"/blue ribbon winners. I'm super proud of him and also of myself! I think this is maybe the 4th year I've entered the baking competitions and the first year I've come out on top. I think they just like complicated recipes, and this one's really pretty complicated. Like as in once or twice a year and that's it complicated (much like the pierogi, which are only for Easter. what is it with these Ukranian recipes?).
But in the spirit of sharing, here's my "Blue Ribbon Chocolate Babka" recipe...cuz yeah, that's what I'm calling it now.

Streusel Topping Ingredients:

1 2/3 Cups Confectioners’ Sugar

1 1/3 Cups All-Purpose Flour

14 T. butter at room temperature

Add all ingredients to food processer and pulse until crumbs form.

Egg wash:

1 Tablespoon Heavy Cream

1 whole egg at room temperature

Mix with fork or whisk.

Chocolate Filling Ingredients:

24-30 oz. miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips (depending on preference) or finely chopped chocolate

1 Cup sugar

2 ½ T. ground cinnamon

1 ½ sticks butter at room temperature, cut into small pieces

Place the chocolate, cup of sugar and the cinnamon in a large bowl, and stir to combine. Cut in 1 ½ sticks of butter until well combined. Set the filling aside.

Babka dough Ingredients:

1 ½ Cups Whole Milk, scalded and cooled slightly

2 T. active dry yeast

¾ Cup Sugar Plus A Pinch

2 Whole Large Eggs at Room Temperature

2 Large Egg Yolks at Room Temperature

6 Cups All-Purpose Flour, Plus Additional Flour For Your Work Surface

1 teaspoon Salt

2 Sticks of Butter at room temperature, cut into small pieces

Babka Instructions:

1. Heat milk in small saucepan on stove just until bubbles form around edges of pan. Remove from heat and let cool.

2. Pour warm milk into a small bowl. Sprinkle yeast and a pinch of sugar over the milk; let it stand until foamy and aromatic, about 5 minutes.

3. In a bowl, whisk together 3/4 cup sugar, 2 eggs and the egg yolks. Add the egg mixture to the yeast mixture, and whisk to combine.

4. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour and salt. Add the egg mixture and beat on low speed until all of the flour is incorporated, about 30 seconds.

5. Change to the dough hook. Add 2 sticks of butter (cut into small pieces) and beat until the flour mixture and butter are completely incorporated, and a smooth, soft dough that’s slightly sticky when squeezed is formed, about 10 minutes.

6. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead a few turns until smooth. Butter a large bowl. Place dough in bowl, and turn to coat. Cover loosely with a tea towel, and set aside in a warm place for an hour, or until bread has approximately doubled in bulk.

 7. Generously butter three loaf pans. At this time, you can make the egg wash and set it aside, and make the streusel topping and chocolate filling if you haven’t already done so.

8. Punch back the dough and transfer it to a clean surface. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Cut the dough into 3 equal pieces. Keep 2 pieces covered with your tea towel while rolling out the third piece. On a generously floured surface, roll the dough out into approximately a 16-inch square (or slightly rectangular).

9. Brush the outer edges of the square with egg wash. Crumble 1/3 of the chocolate filling evenly over the dough, leaving a ½ -inch border.

10. Roll the dough up tightly like a jelly roll, starting at the top. Once dough is a long cylinder, twist 5 or 6 turns from each end. Place into prepared loaf pan in a horseshoe shape to that the dough cover the entire bottom of the pan. Brush the top of the roll with egg wash.

11. Repeat this process with the remaining 2 pieces of dough and the remaining filling.

12. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Crumble 1/3 of the streusel topping over each loaf.

13. Loosely cover each pan with a tea towel and let stand in a warm place for 20 minutes.

14. Bake the loaves in the preheated oven until golden, about 55 minutes.

15. Decrease the oven temperature to 325 degrees rotate the pans in the oven at this time. Continue to bake at lower temperature until the babkas are a deep golden brown, about 15 to 20 minute. Remove them from the oven and transfer them to wire racks until completely cool, then remove the babkas from the pans and serve.

oh, and we also went blueberry picking

which i had never done before. and i also ate an apricot, because i had never eaten one before. and guess what? it was awesome. i know it sounds pretty mundane, but it was quite the experience for me. i generally consider myself a pretty adventurous eater. i like all kinds of strange-to-the-american-palate, culturally-specific foods and pride myself on trying things even if i don't know what they are made of (especially if i don't know, i guess). i even tried tongue this summer at wolfie's down the shore. but i had never had a non-dried apricot before. and it was a revelation. like a peach but better because it wasn't as juicy and fuzzy, because i imagine that's what it would be like to eat a person so it always creeps me out, even though peaches are delicious. we picked some up at the orchard where we had been picking (och's orchard, which is in warwick, if you want to know. they're great!), then i tried one in the driveway, and the next thing i knew we were turning into the next farm market about a mile down the road to pick up some more. even stenni loved them!
hubs says that i had probably never had a non-dried apricot because only old people eat them. maybe he's right. i always though old people ate a lot of strange foods (like canned meats and such), but apparently apricots are not one of them.
also, blueberry picking was pretty fun. stenni calls blueberries "bear snacks" and kept making bear noises and roaring all over the place, and would call for impromptu picnics in the fields every 5 minutes to devour everything she picked. all in all, it was a good day.