A Perfect Pie For Epiphany

January 6th is a  pretty special day. Known as The Twelfth Day Of Christmas (regardless of how many drummers you  have drumming)... Twelfth Night... the first day, or Feast of Epiphany... and around here, we also remember it as Dad's birthday. It's a day to mark  transitions (maybe even more so than New Year's), as well as the revelation of something remarkable. To me, that's a date that deserves special observance.

This is the perfect pie for the occasion.* Sweet, but not too sweet. Festive, but without strict nostalgic ties to any other holiday. Comforting, as all apple pies should be. Sparkling, with surprising flavors to awaken your palate from all the hearty winter foods of late. A transitional pie. A revelatory pie.

Apples For Autumn

A simple apple cake or apple bread is, in my opinion, the perfect thing on an autumn day, whether it be warm, crisp or drizzly (that goes for the weather or the cake). Homey, comforting, and just plain delicious, these apple goodies are loaded with walnuts, raisins, and warm autumn spices. With a big slice of apple cake, a mug of hot tea, and a good book... you can just color me all kinds of contented.

• German Apple Cake at the Honey and Jam blog
• Sticky Spiked Double-Apple Cake with a Brown Sugar-Brandy Sauce at The Kitchn or, if you have the book: it's on page 441 of In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley (2001).
• Apple Walnut Flaxseed Bread from Joy The Baker 
• An Old-Fashioned Apple Spice Cake (with a brown sugar meringue top) from the Food 52 blog
• These Cheddar Apple Bars from Canadian Living sound healthy, delicious and perfect for a picnic or potluck.
• Like many of these recipes, this whole wheat flour Fresh Apple (or Pear) Cake from Grocery Shrink can be served for breakfast or dessert. 

Upsetting The Apple Tart

This is a story of two tarts. Two apple custard tarts. I would like it to have been a story of one bad apple tart and how it redeemed itself and became a good apple tart and made everyone around it happier for having been near it. This is not that story.

No, this story is about two apple tarts that were alike in many ways but were dramatically different in others. One's strength was the other's weakness. Neither of them were very good, but neither were they all bad. Their goodness, overshadowed by their badness, brought joy to no one and left only disappointment in the hearts of those who tried to love them.

Apple Custard Tart #1: Went together beautifully. Crust was flaky and delicious. But when you hear the voice in your head say: "Wow... that sure seems like an awful lot of ground clove!", listen to it. Ponder. Evaluate. Trust your knowledge and experience. Tell yourself it's o.k. to not follow the printed directions to the letter. Allow that typos happen and other people's tastes are not your own. Someone may actually want a numbing sensation after finishing their dessert. Perhaps they have some pending dental work? What a waste. I couldn't even look when Hubs dumped it into the trash can.

Famous Local Beauties

There are three pounds of Gravenstein apples* on my counter. What to do? They're just a little bit special. Gravensteins don't keep well, and they don't travel well either. What good are they then? Well, they taste absolutely lovely. Mostly sweet, a little bit tart with something almost floral hiding in there too. And they can more than hold their own when baked in a pie. When you see Gravensteins, you just buy them. Period.  It'll be another year before you see them again.

So now that I got 'em, what do I do with 'em? How to use them to their best advantage? Perhaps one of these gorgeous apple recipes I've had my eye on...

• Apple, Honey, Goat Cheese Tartlets from Serious Eats
• Apple Dumplings from the Design*Sponge "In The Kitchen With..." series
• Tarte Aux Pommes at Apartment Therapy/The Kitchn
• Free-Form Apple Tart also from The Kitchn
• This Apple Tea Cake at What Katie Ate is simply beautiful

*Read more about Gravenstein apples here.

A Bevy Of Betties

The name "Betty" is short for Elizabeth. But then, so is: Liz, Liza, Beth, Bett, Ellie, Lizzie, Eliza, and Betsy... and on and on (I hereby nominate Elizabeth as one of the world's most versatile names). Though all Betties are Elizabeths*, not all Elizabeths... are Betties. Betties are a unique subset. Right at this moment, I can count seven sensational Betties in my house (represented by their books, movies, and music). Among them are a seriously old-fashioned dessert and a workhorse of a teapot, both dating back to around the same time period and sharing the same name - "Brown Betty". Coincidence? Maybe.

• Betty Mc Donald ...reluctantly had a farm - and wrote about it in "The Egg & I" 
• Betty White ...the ever hilarious Happy Homemaker is always good as gold
  
• Brown Betty ...a classic British tea brewing vessel with historic past
  
• Bette Davis ...dramatic actress with a capital D - determined, defiant, daring
  
• Betty Crocker ...cookbook "author" and ageless icon of packaged food mixes
  
• Apple Brown Betty ...simple, homey, comforting food - easier than pie
  
• Betty Hutton ...comedic actress, spunky singer, and all-around fireball
  

The Brown Betty Teapot is about as British as you can get, she's been made the same way in the same place for the past 250 years, give or take. Plain and sturdy, she'll do the job, do it well, and never complain. At our house, tea is the caffeinated beverage of choice and is consumed by the potful, pretty much on a daily basis. So when our six-year-old thrift store teapot recently made it's last pot of tea, we decided to get a durable, capacious, high-quality English teapot. Enter the Brown Betty. If she lives up to her reputation, we will be making tea together for a long long time.

Apple Brown Betty is an all-American girl and one of our oldest documented desserts.** If the Apple Pie is America in all her blue-jeans glory, then Apple Brown Betty is America in flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers. Today I'm honoring the arrival of our new Brown Betty teapot by making an Apple Brown Betty. It's the perfect thing for welcoming someone to your home. Humble, homey and delicious. It shows guests that you cared enough to make something from scratch, but also that you didn't "go to too much trouble on their account".

Because I have the time, I'm going to make the Apple Brown Betty á la Martha (see link below). It's a little fussy for a Brown Betty, but it's quite pretty and a bit special. I surprised Hubs with this version after dinner one evening last year and he surprised me in turn by saying, "Apple Brown Betty? I LOVE Apple Brown Betty!". Turns out his mom used to make it when he was a kid. Ten years married and this was the first I'd heard of it. So, if my dear MIL is reading this... please send me your recipe! In the meantime, here's the one I made and some other ones I found in my bookshelf...

Apple Brown Betty from page 115 in The Best Of MSL: What To Have For Dinner (1995) makes four individual servings.

Notes: I used sourdough bread since that is what we had. Forgot that my ramekins are too small for this! There were enough apples to make nearly 8 little Betties, but not enough of the bread-crumb mixture (just like last time). In the colonial spirit, I grabbed a package of crackers and used them instead. It sounded like a good idea, but it didn't fly (we ate them anyway). These will shrink a lot while they bake, so really press them down extra firmly when layering them. A little scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream is the perfect accessory for these itty-bitty-Betties.

• Skillet Apple Brown Betty: Page 25, Cooks Illustrated, Jan/Feb 2004 issue. This one looks really good and is made in a cast iron pan on the stove top. Love that.
  
• The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook (of course) has a Quick Brown Betty and a Blushing Betty (with rhubarb), both on page 220 (1950 edition).
• How To Cook Everything (1998) has an Apple Brown Betty recipe on page 524. (Couldn't find a link.)
  
• On page 174 of The Essential Dessert Cookbook (1998) is a recipe for an Apple Betty using apple purée. (I've never made anything in this book yet, and readily admit that I initially bought it because of the photos)

* While someone's given name may indeed be Betty (and not Elizabeth), the origin of the name Betty is still Elizabeth.
** It is described as dating back to Colonial times. Where did those first colonists come from? Um... England. It begs the question: Which came first, Teapot Brown Betty or Apple Brown Betty? Was one named for the other? Try not to lose any sleep over it. I'm not.
Trivia Time: If you have 6 minutes to waste, test your knowledge of Famous Betties on Sporcle.com
Some of my other favorite Betties: Betty Lou Perkins, Betty Everett, Atomic Betty, and Betty Lou (the luckiest Betty of them all?)

Breakfast Glam Slam

I've done it... I've made a recipe from one of the gazillion torn-out magazine pages that I've been collecting for too many years (this particular one from Glamour circa 1994). It's a little embarrassing admitting that, but also a little triumphant. All this time I just knew I'd like it, and I did.

It was easy and delicious and even sort of healthy... even after we poured maple syrup and cream over it. Yes, we did. We just happened to have maple syrup and cream on hand (unusual for us actually), and it seemed like the thing to do.

It turned out quite similar to the Baked Pear Pancake that we like so much.* The pear pancake had the advantage of going from stove top to oven in the same pan. This recipe uses one additional pan. I can handle that (even in the morning).

It's not the heartiest of breakfasts if that's what you're looking for, but a little bacon or sausage on the side should fix that right up! It says it serves four, but fearing that it wouldn't reheat well the next day, we polished off the whole thing between the two of us. We didn't feel too guilty though. Check out the ingredient quantities and you'll see why.

Breakfast Puff
(adapted from Glamour magazine, May 1994 issue, Gourmet On The Run by Jane Kirby r.d.)**
Serves: 4 ...(or 2)

1 Tbsp butter
3 Granny Smith apples, cut into 1-inch chunks
4 Tbsp sugar
1/2 cup flour
Zest of one lemon
1/4 tsp salt
2 Large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup milk

Optional (but recommended) for serving:
Powdered sugar
Maple syrup
Cream

Heat oven to 425°F. Grease a 9-inch pie plate and set it on a baking sheet (see note). In a large skillet on medium heat, melt the butter. Add the apples and cook until softened, about 15 minutes. Stir in half of the sugar. Arrange the apples in the prepared pie plate.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, zest, salt and the rest of the sugar. Using a whisk, blend in the eggs and milk, then pour the mixture over the apples. Put the baking sheet with the pie plate on it into the oven and bake for 30 minutes (or until puffed and golden).

Let rest for a minute, then cut into quarters and dust with powdered sugar. Serve with cream and/or warm maple syrup drizzled over the top.

*We do seem to really go for breakfasts that combine cooked fruit baked in a puffed batter. What's up with that? Maybe it reminds us of dessert?
**The book Gourmet On The Run published in 1987, is out of print. This recipe was published in the magazine in 1994. I do not believe it was included in the book.
Note: This greatly reduces any accidental sloshing of batter onto the counter (or floor, or oven door), while attempting to carry a pie plate full of batter across the kitchen and then into a hot oven. It will also make it easier to retrieve the blistering hot pie plate out of that same oven when the time comes.

There Is No "P" In Granny Smith*

The rain we were promised earlier in the week finally materialized (and how!), we were snug and warm indoors, and there was a round of pastry dough in the freezer. An apple crostata would be something new, yet also comfortingly familiar.

By now, my friends are probably wondering if I know how to make anything else. How many of these have I made in the last six months? 10? 12 or more? But I've never tried apple; wanted to, but was unsure. Apples are generally firmer than peaches, plums and pears*. How would they act within this recipe? Only one way to find out.

I just finished reading an excellent cookbook/memoir**, and in it the author describes an apple pie like one I made years ago: piled high with apples going into the oven, coming out with a big space under the top crust where the apples used to be. The fruit had cooked down while the crust stayed in place. Her solution was to sauté the apples first and then pile them into the pastry.

Since this was to be an experimental crostata, I decided to try it both ways: cooked and raw, in the same crust. That's my idea of "blind baking"... I had absolutely no idea what would happen. This one wouldn't be leaving my kitchen to be foisted onto unsuspecting friends though, so nobody would be thinking to themselves, "Crostata? Again?".

Frankly, most of it wouldn't even live to see the following day. We ate it before AND after dinner, then forced ourselves to wrap the rest up and save for the following day. I just know, that with the littlest bit of encouragement, we would have polished off the whole thing. Was it perfect in every way? No. Did it look magazine-cover gorgeous? No. Did it taste really really good? Uh, yep!

My Notes: Using the Peach Crostata recipe as a guide, I first peeled and sliced the apples and tossed them with some lemon juice. Then I mixed them with cinnamon/clove/nutmeg along with a little sugar and flour. Half of the apples then went into the skillet with some butter and were cooked until soft, but not falling apart. When they had cooled off, I started layering them into the rolled out dough and filled up the rest of the space with the raw apples. The cooked apples had lost half their bulk, so the pie was more like 25% cooked apples to 75% raw apples. I brushed the crust with water and sprinkled chunky sugar over it (and yes, I'm still working that jar of pastel green sugar). 

When I took it out of the oven, the crust was totally done and the apples didn't look so hot. They had shrunk down and left a gap under the crust, even on the pre-cooked side! The raw fruit looked dry and the cooked fruit looked a little better. And maybe it would have looked fine after being brushed with a warm glaze, but that kind of negates the whole "simple rustic country dessert" feel that I was going for. Next time I'll leave out the flour, sauté all of the apples (will probably need more to make up for the shrinkage) and I'll use more butter and sugar so they'll get more caramel-y. Hopefully that should do the trick.

*Up to this point I had only made Crostati with fruit whose name began with the letter "P". Didn't plan it, just noticed it one day. I notice stuff like that.
**Confections Of A Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It was not only a lot of fun to read, it also has an artery-clogging butter-filled pastry recipe at the end of each tasty chapter! I hope the library doesn't notice that I drooled on all the pages.

One-Bowl Apple Cake

The last of the sad apples have been reincarnated as this easy apple cake. They must've done something right during their little apple lives to have ended up here. The warm cinnamon and apple smells coming from the oven are just so good. Maybe they're not exactly reincarnated, but with so many other obvious metaphors to choose from, this one was as good as any. A few weeks ago these little apples had fallen off of a tree. That's pretty much the end of the road for an apple. These particular windfalls found their way into my kitchen and there they sat. And sat...and sat. Until today. I washed and dried them, cut them up and baked them into this cake (o.k. cakes - I made two), now cooling on my counter top. Those little apples are now fully realized as our breakfast. They're happier now. Tender, moist, nutty and fragrant. It's a good thing I made two.

Baked Apples a la Betty

A few sad apples were pleading with me from the drawer in the fridge. They felt forgotten, and so they had been. Since there wasn't quite enough leftover oatmeal from yesterday to feed both of us today, I had the lovely idea to augment the porridge with baked apples. Oh yum and yes, please!

Then the realization hit me... Crank up the oven to 350° for a whole hour, just to cook 4 apples for breakfast? Holy gas & electric bill, Batman! Not gonna happen.

Betty Crocker to the rescue! The New Good And Easy Cookbook (circa 1962) to be precise.

Yes, the home of such delectable dishes as: Asparagus-Dried Beef Savory, Feast-A-Pie, and Pacific Lime Mold*, also provided the time and money-saving fake for our breakfast this morning. 

Baked apples on the stove top.  Who knew?  Betty did, that's who.

Magic Apples 
(page 47, Betty Crocker's New Good And Easy Cookbook, 1962)

These are the basic steps...

1. Prepare apples according to your favorite baked apple recipe. I core them from the bottom with my trusty melon-baller and stuff them with whatever chopped nuts and dried fruits are on hand, along with brown sugar, cinnamon, and some butter. 
2. Place apples in saucepan with 1/2 inch of water and put the lid on it. 
3. Cook on medium heat for 10—12 minutes or until tender, removing lid for last couple of minutes.

Notes: Not quite as good as traditional baked apples but way faster and a whole lot easier on the electric bill!

*All delectable dishes listed are actual recipes found in the above-mentioned cookbook and were chosen randomly, however the weirdest ones were given preference. And let me tell you, it was hard to limit the list to just three!