Apple Season!

Yesterday was apple day in our cozy little home. :) We had a bushel of apples from our trip to the orchard and we were itching to use them! We settle on three things: apple pie, apple butter, and applesauce. 

The apple pie was a simple affair. We used premade crust and the recipe on the side of the box. I also finally tried out God's gift to apple-lovers everywhere: my apple peeler/slicer/corer. Wow! Where has this thing been all of my life? haha I am now under the impression that our home should have a minimum of two!

The most immediately rewarding product of our endeavors was the apple pie. It got rave reviews from the hubs and the kids. We ate (admittedly too much of) it after having a family taco night. Those were also delicious. ;) I was feeling my apple fantasy yesterday, so I stabbed a rough picture of an apple into the crust. I don't hate how it came out. Next time, I think I will go back to a homemade crust. There is no flavor whatsoever in the premade crusts. 

Yesterday also marked the first time I have ever made apple butter. Don't get me wrong, I like the flavor of apple butter. It has just never been something that is on my 'to do' list. I'm not sure what changed that this year, beyond the fact that I like to try new things. That, and I was sure that hubs and the girls would appreciate having this delicious snack around. We slow-cooked it too long, as we started in the afternoon and left it overnight. Still, I think it came out alright. Everyone loves the way it tastes. 

Forgetting that I was using apples in other ways (even while doing so), I clearly overestimated how much space I needed to cook down the applesauce. lol I decided to use the large stockpot and, boy, was that unnecessary! No matter, the sauce was cooked just fine anyway. :) We never had to worry that it would foam over the top, at any rate! 

This year, my hubs was not at work when we took on the bushel of apples. As such, this was his first time ever joining up in the process. Wow, did that speed things up! Between having a second adult around and using my corer/slicer/peeler, we really whipped out everything in absolutely no time at all! I will have to schedule all of my "apple fixin'" for when he is home from now on. ;)

We also pulled out the Ninja that Hubs bought for my birthday this year and went to town. I turned all of the apple butter and applesauce into purees using the 'smoothie' option. Oh. My. Stars. The kids went absolutely wild over the softness of both items! I am not kidding! Nobody seemed to care at all that this is technically baby food at this point. The flavor is there and the sauce and 'butter' are so smooth and delicious!

All things considered, I would have to say that apple season 2021 was a huge success. So much so that that I potentially have my eye on one more trip to the orchard, if at all possible. The autumnal season has long brought me so much joy. I've struggled with that since my dad passed on. Doing things like this together as a family is good for the soul. I will never stop. <3

Cherry Chip No-Fry (Baked) Cake Donuts

    Let's skip straight to the point, okay? These donuts are 100% cake. They're round like donuts, but they *are*, in fact, cake. Okay, we've got that out of the way. :) Other blogs gush about how lovely it is to have donuts that you've baked without the mess and impact of frying. I get it. Truly, I do. I didn't want to eat grease. (I can't handle it anymore.) I didn't want to work with grease. But I am not going to lie to you and say that these are 'cake donuts'. They're not. They're round, holey, little cakes. Okay? Shew! Fortunately, my kids are good with that. ;)

Let's also get the recipe out of the way up top. Too few recipe pages do that. Here goes:

1 Box Cake Mix (your choice)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk
1 egg

Simple! I have perused cake mix donut recipes for about a week now, in anticipation of making these. They are all nearly identical. If I had to split them into two camps, it would be "more milk, fewer eggs" and "more eggs, less milk". I opted to slide right down the middle of the recipes and made them as listed above. I baked them for 14 minutes in silicone donut pans at 350 degrees. 

It is important to spray the pan before you add the dough. I scraped the batch into a gallon-sized zipper bag, snipped the corner off, and pressed out the batter in a circle around the ring. You can see below that around half of the donut was plenty. They plumped right up to the proper size.

It is also notable that you need to let these babies cool for around ten minutes after baking, so they come out of the pan more easily. You can also loosen them up with the handle end of a spoon if you feel you need to. 

These little cakes were very good, if somewhat fragile. In the end, rather than refilling the three fun donut trays, I popped the rest of the dough into cupcake wrappers and baked them up as-is. You get more "inside" in one bite this way. The inside is my favorite part. :) I also filled six of them with chocolate icing and then frosted the tops. My girls at them so quickly I don't have a picture. Hubs and I prefer without. All in all, doing these with my kids was 'memories in the bank' enjoyable: a real bonus in our day. <3 

Should you choose to make these, know that they will be fun and flavorful whether you consider them to be true cake donuts or not. There is still a recipe floating around out there that I would like to try. It calls for substituting other wet ingredients with applesauce, pumpkin puree, or smashed banana. The pictures on that recipe certainly looked more like cake donuts do inside. We shall see! 

Apples, Pumpkins, and Smoothies

Perusing the Pumpkin Patch

September 28th

My, it took us forever to get to the apple orchard! I usually like to make several trips through the summer and fall. Not so, this year. We made our first (and potentially only) trip just this past Tuesday afternoon. It is harder to work around schedules these days, what with Hubs working through the week and having classes, and Giraffe working on the weekends and having classes, her own appointments, and activities. Add the extra child and pet appointments that seem to be all week long in the evenings now, and there you have it. A busier year and less access to family time to run around. :) 

Even so, we had the loveliest time! The kids and I were ready as soon as Hubs came home from work. We piled ourselves and both doggos into the vehicle, and off we went! :) This was our puppy's first time at the orchard, which was exciting. Our little old lady has been here many times. She mosied around the apple trees like it was old hat. You could see the joy all over her chubby little face. <3 :) I was hoping to get a full bushel of apples. In the end, we found four such fabulous pumpkins that we couldn't choose just two for the girls. I opted for a half bushel of apples and all four of us each had a pumpkin instead. :) The kids also had cider, courtesy of Giraffe. She's such a generous soul. <3

We had no sooner gotten home than Koala grabbed her newest pumpkin, a small white pumpkin we already had at home, and some of her winter things and propped them into a scarf-clad pumpkin child on the floor. I was in the other room, at the time. She came rushing in and asked for my phone "to take a picture". I assumed she meant a shot of the pumpkins altogether, but nope. She showed back up with the biggest grin on her face and the picture to my right. lol Clever child! I never know what to expect with her or her sister, either one! It is one of my all-time favorite things about having children. There simply is no guessing what is in their mind or heart at any given time. They are such a complete and utter joy to nurture along for this part of their (hopefully lengthy) lives. God is so good to us. <3

September 30th

Somewhere around a week ago, I saw a graphic on Facebook that had the ingredients for an autumnal pumpkin spice smoothie. I was sure that I had saved it. By the time I was ready to try making it, I couldn't find it anywhere. The recipes I looked at online didn't seem exactly right. They called for ice, for one. I remembered that the recipe called for bananas, maple syrup, pumpkin pie spice, and pumpkin puree. 

I gave it my best shot, sort of combining a few recipes I saw online. Instead of milk and ice, I used vanilla ice cream (roughly six scoops). I added the suggested 4 tablespoons of maple syrup from another recipe. Two teaspoons of vanilla were next, followed closely by four bananas (previously frozen for an hour-ish). Giraffe sliced up two tablespoons of butter and dropped them in a pat at a time. We were really dubious about that one. I'm still not sure why the other online recipe called for them. They were completely unnecessary. I digress. Two cups of pure pumpkin puree lent color to the mix. (Must not use pie filling, every recipe cautioned!) Finally, the teaspoon of cinnamon and the two teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice rounded out the fall flavor-fest. 

Results: The flavor was okay. It wasn't anything I would drink, personally. The kids absolutely loved it. Mom win! It tasted mostly like overripe banana, pumpkin, and a bit of seasoning. Oh... and my Koala broke out in hives. Big ones. I dosed her with allergy meds and then took a picture of two of the patches of hives, for the record. So, mom-win-turned-mom-fail. The child loved it but can never drink this kind of smoothie again. Oof! I froze the rest of the batch in a large mason jar. Giraffe is slowly eating that as an ice cream treat. :)