Posts Tagged ‘apples’

Someone in our house is having a birthday this week (on the 30th) and has requested apple dumplings rather than a birthday cake. Several years ago I found this recipe and it has become a family favorite. Let me tell you a little story.

I first came to know the Lord while I was in high school through the witness of a friend from school. Soon after I was saved I met a woman, Norma, from my church who was about my mother's age. I came to find out that Norma and my mother had known each other many years earlier when they had worked together in a munitions plant during WWII. My mother had even been a bridesmaid in Norma's wedding. In the intervening years Norma had come to know the Lord and started attending the little church that I attended.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Norma and my mom became reacquainted and Norma very faithfully ministered to my mom and witnessed to her over the years until one day mom professed her faith and trust in the Lord as her personal saviour too. Norma did not have an easy life as her husband was not a believer and was very unkind to her. In spite of her own trials Norma was a faithful witness and the Lord used her greatly to bless my life.

Often when I was home from college Norma would invite Mom and me over for a meal. It was at one of these meals that I first tasted apple dumplings. Norma's dumplings were absolutely delicious! From the first time I ate them I hoped that she would serve them every time we would visit.

Being the diligent home economics student that I was I also asked her how she made them. She gave me some very sketchy directions which I eventually tried, but my dumplings were nothing like Norma's.

After Rob and I were married I continued my quest for a good dumpling recipe and finally found success when I found this recipe in the book Hospitality with Confidence by Grace Pittman. It is a book that I used for several years in teaching a class on Christian hospitality.

These dumplings are very rich, so save them for a special treat. Grace has aptly named them:

World's Greatest Apple Dumplings
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 cup butter

Combine all ingredients above in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about 3 minutes. Set aside.

6 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tsps. baking powder
3/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup milk

Combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Cut in the shortening as if you were making biscuits. Stir in the milk to make a soft dough. Roll out to 1/4" thickness. (For 6 dumplings I roll it out to a 15" x 10" rectangle. For 12 dumplings 16" x 12".) Cut the dough into the number of squares desired. Place apple slices in each square. Fold the corners in to make an envelope shape. Don't worry if these look messy. Place the filled dumplings in a 9" x 13" baking dish. Pour the syrup over the dumplings making sure every bit of the dough is moistened by the syrup. You might want to use a spoon as you do this. Bake at 375 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Serve warm with cream, whipped cream, or ice cream. You can reheat any leftovers.

Here are the raw dumplings being spooned with syrup:

Here are the baked dumplings, right out of the oven:

Here is a dumpling topped with ice cream, ready to be enjoyed:

These are delectable and I hope you will try them sometime. It's amazing that such simple ingredients can be combined to make such a delicious dish. It's also amazing that that a simple friendship can change the course of a life for all eternity.

Becka

P.S. Here is a picture of my faithful assistant blogger, Adelaide. She hops up beside me on the desk whenever I am at the computer.

 Print this post
E-mail this post to a friend
Share this post on Facebook

If you enjoyed this post, get my RSS feed or get my posts by e-mail

We love apples here at our house. I always start getting excited about driving up to NC to look for apples about mid-August. Not many of the apple barns are open that early, but you can usually find some. We like to eat the apples raw, in salads, and in a variety of desserts. We generally buy more than we actually need and when they start to shrivel I make applesauce. One of my first blog posts was about canning applesauce. I get carried away when I find apples for $10 a bushel and just can't resist buying them.

I saw a recipe for an Upside Down Apple Cake recently and it sounded really good to me. That recipe had quite a bit of butter in it, so I did a little research and found one that was a bit more reasonable. I tried it this week and it made a very attractive and delicious cake. We ate ours with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. Here's the link - http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/apple_upside_down_cake I wish I could have baked one for DD Megan who is celebrating her birthday today. Maybe I can make her a belated cake when I visit next month.

If you enjoy cooking you should peruse the Simply Recipes site. I have tried several of the recipes there and have enjoyed them. Her site is very well organized and there is a picture of each recipe.

Some tips about the cake recipe: I cooked the apples in the caramel sauce until the caramel was reduced quite a bit. It had small bubbles throughout. The time probably depends a great deal on how juicy your apples are.The apples I used were called Honey Crisp. I also recommend putting the cake pan on a baking sheet. My pan was pretty full with the apples and the cake batter. It didn't run over in the oven, but a drop of caramel did bubble out. I was a bit concerned about the cornmeal in the cake batter, but you wouldn't know it was there unless someone told you.

Do you have any favorite apple memories or recipes?

Becka

If you enjoyed this post, get my RSS feed or get my posts by e-mail

Sometimes you just need a little something to round out a meal. This salad is one of my favorites for fall and winter when there aren't a lot of good fruits available for a pretty fruit salad.

Winter Fruit Salad
2 medium red apples (my favorite is Gala)
1 1/2 cups red seedless grapes, halved
small can mandarin oranges, drained
1 cup vanilla yogurt

Core and chop apples into bite-size pieces. Combine with the grapes, mandarin oranges, and yogurt. Stir gently. Makes 5-6 servings.

All the amounts are approximate. Just use what you have. If I'm serving this on Sunday I often prepare the grapes and oranges ahead of time and then add the apple and yogurt just before the meal. Leftovers do hold up pretty well for a day or two - just stir to recombine the yogurt.

Enjoy!

Becka

If you enjoyed this post, get my RSS feed or get my posts by e-mail

Don't get me wrong - if you invite me over for dinner I will gladly eat whatever applesauce you place before me, but if it's up to me I will not buy the canned or jarred stuff from the grocery store.

Why is it that the texture of commercially prepared applesauce is so different from homemade applesauce? Can anybody out there in the webosphere tell me? I have a hunch that they just grind up raw apples, add sugar and citric acid and put it in the cans. To me it tastes mealy rather than smooth like homemade.

It is possible to get really good commercially canned applesauce - they have it in France. It's called compote de pommes and it's delicious.

Every fall we make several trips up to the Hendersonville, NC area to purchase apples. We go most often to Lyda Farms. We eat a lot of them raw and I use some for some of our favorite apple dishes such as apple pie, apple dumplings, etc. After a while the apples start to shrivel up a bit and then it's time to make applesauce.

Today I used up the last of the fall apples and made a batch of applesauce and some apple butter. One tool that we purchased many years ago makes making applesauce a lot easier - the Victorio Strainer.

Here's the process:

Wash the apples and remove any leaves.

Cut the apples in quarters and remove any bad spots.

Place in cooking pots with a small amount of water and cook until they are very tender - the cut surfaces will look fluffy.

Assemble the Victorio Strainer.

Place the cooked apples in the hopper and crank the handle.

The applesauce comes out of one side and the peels, cores, and stems come out the other!

Sweeten to taste, place in jars, and process in a hot water bath.

Here are the finished jars. This should keep the doctor away for some time.

Becka

If you enjoyed this post, get my RSS feed or get my posts by e-mail