apple butter

It’s time to talk about apples.

It’s already spring here in Australia but there are still some lovely apples to be had and I urge you, before it’s too late, to make this delectable condiment before it’s too hot to have the stove on for five hours.

chai spiced apple cake

I’ve been in a bit of a funk for the past few days. It started at approximately 1300 hours Perth time, Wednesday the 4th of January, when I boarded the plane bound for Melbourne. I really did not want to go home.

And then it continued, as I lazed around the house and didn’t do my washing and procrastinated my huge list of things to do. I didn’t bake, I read books and trawled the internet and definitively didn’t write any blog posts.

I started quite a few in my mind but every time I went to bake something there was something in the sink, or on the sink, and I was so lazy I couldn’t be bothered with dishes, either mine or anyone else’s.

That’s a lie. I was pretty good with my own dishes. Pretty good. Not perfect. But pretty good. Easy, seeing as I wasn’t eating proper meals anyway. (Mum, pretend you didn’t read that.)

But the funk is debunked. I have gone back to work and I did two loads of washing, I ate cabbage for dinner (no, really. It’s pretty amazing. I’ll tell you about it soon) and I baked a cake.

apple pie

Writer’s block is not fun.

I have plenty of other ways to procrastinate, I don’t have to blog.

Some options include:

Sow seeds (in life and in the ground).

Organise possibility of being a lead tenant for Youth For Christ next year.

Organise possibly extending my trip to Perth so I can hang out with Peace Tree. (and visit Georgia and Dave?)

Study for my quiz tomorrow.

Make more chocolate muffins for September Camp.

Upload my study questions for Sep Camp.

Go for a walk. Or a run. Or do some yoga. Or some other kind of physical exercise to not. stress. out. Because I have this essay I keep procrastinating from doing.

So yeah, I wrote up a complete running sheet for the last few days before camp. I have an illness. I have lists upon lists and I HAVEN’T STARTED MY ESSAY YET (Mum and Dad, just forget you read that, yeah?)

It’s ok, I planned time to write the essay. It’s gonna happen. I haven’t got a back up plan so it HAS to happen (hopefully with little to no effort on my part.)

Besides, I have apple pie to calm my nerves.

Technically, it’s apple and pear pie. I got fruit from the farmer’s market on the weekend because it’s almost not apple and pear season anymore and I wanted pie. I love pie.

And thanks to Pam’s Pie Tutorial courtesy of The Pioneer Woman (thank you, Ree!) I made a perfect pie. I’m not kidding. It tastes amazing, it was perfectly cooked, it looks incredible and it’s just as good cold as hot.

I know. I’ve already had more than I need.

Apple and Pear Pie (two crust)

Adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Pam says that pie making is not a recipe, it’s an approach. It’s about the technique. So while this is a recipe, it’s a very loose one. Play around. Enjoy. Make pie.

2 1/2 cups flour (plain or pastry)

1 tsp salt

2 tsp sugar

250g butter, cold, cut into chunks

1/4 cup ice water

about 6 cups (8 pieces of fruit) fruit, peeled and chopped (if needed)

1/2 cup (more if needed) sugar

2 tbsp cornflour or other thickener

juice of one lemon

2 tsp cinnamon

pinch ground cloves

pinch nutmeg (more than cloves)

Pulse 2 cups flour, salt and sugar in a food processor. Add butter and pulse until it looks like breadcrumbs (alternatively, whisk together dry ingredients and use fingertips to rub in butter.) Pulse in 1/2 cup flour (just) and place in a bowl or on your counter. Sprinkle water over, knead in and form into two discs.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees Celsius.

Stir together fruit, lemon juice, thickener and spices. Make sure all the fruit pieces are even and that the mixture coats each piece.

Now, to roll out the dough, take two pieces of parchment paper (or baking paper) and place a dough disk in between them. Roll out to fit your pie pan (this recipe makes enough for one two crust nine inch pie). Place one rolled out disc into the bottom of your pie dish and prick all over with a fork.

Place the fruit in the dish and dot with butter (about four or five tablespoons). Cover with the other half of the dough, rolled out. Crimp the edges however you like and slit the top a few times. (You may choose, as I did, to decorate the top with the scraps of dough left over.) Brush with a beaten egg or some heavy cream.

Bake at 250º for about half an hour, until nicely browned on top. Cover with foil to stop browning and lower heat to 200 degrees for anywhere from 1/2 hour to 40 minutes – apples will need longer, berries will need less.

Let rest for about ten to twenty minutes on the counter before you eat with heavy cream or ice cream.

apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies

You know how most people clean the fridge when they’re procrastinating?

Well, that’s me.

The fridge, the kitchen, the bathroom, my bedroom, my clothes, the dishes. Nothing is safe from my cleaning wrath.

To be honest, the main reason I had to clean the kitchen was so I could make more cookies. MORE!?!?!? I can hear you shout from over here. How can you make more cookies?

Simple. People eat them, I make more. We’ve still got some chocolate chip cookies but the rest of them are G-A-W-N gawn. Disappeared. Kaput.

They were just too good.

And also, I’m catching up with the TEAR group tonight so I have to bring something. Have to. Can’t help myself, really. It’s a bit of an addiction.

(For those of you who read into the enneagram system, yes, I am a two. I’m working on it. For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m on about, I’ll probably write more about it later. Hang in there.)

But hey, I like giving cookies out, people like eating them; it’s a win-win situation. Except these ones I kinda stuffed up.

See, I didn’t pull my cup measure out, I only pulled the half cup measure out, thinking, oh, yeah, I’ll just use two of these for one cup.

I don’t really bother too much about accuracies unless I’m making macarons. Then we get serious.

So I put half a cup of flour instead of one cup. I am, as my father would say, a nuff nuff.

Ah well. The crispy, falling apart first batch will be perfect for both garnishing my breakfast muesli and stirring into ice cream. It’ll be fine.

And the second batch, which took ages to cook because I’d turned the oven down, were perfect. Eat warm. With whipped cream.

I also think these would be great as a muffin. Just add milk, yeah?

Excuse me. I have to go try that now.

Apple Cinnamon Oat Cookies

Adapted from Joy the Baker

125g butter

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract (or half a teaspoon vanilla bean paste)

1 1/4 cups oats (I used rolled; quick cooking is also acceptable)

1 cup flour

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

1 largish apple, peeled, cored and diced

juice of half a lemon

 

Preheat oven to 180º and line two baking trays.

Toss the apple and the lemon together. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugars until fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla, scraping down the bowl, until light and fluffy.

Add the dry ingredients and stir in until just incorporated. (Don’t forget half the flour like I did).

Plop tablespoons of the mixture onto prepared trays. Bake about 10 minutes.

 

permission and apple cake

Someone important to me once told me a story. There was a man who wanted to change the world, but no matter what he did, the world didn’t change. So, instead, he tried to change his country. But no matter what he did, his country didn’t change. Next he tried to change his city, but his city didn’t change. he tried to change his suburb, but his suburb didn’t change. Then he tried to change his family, but his family didn’t change. Lastly, the man tried to change himself. And he did.
And, all of a sudden, his family began to change. Then his suburb began to change. Then his city. Then his country. And then, one day, the world changed. Start with yourself. Start small. And see the world change around you.*

The thing with this story is also, that changing yourself is not always easy. It takes a while. Maybe you’re stuck living at home, and all you want to do is go live in community with like minded people, growing vegies and minimising waste, having less fortunate people over for dinner every night, talking to your neighbours and doing pumpkin drops.

Maybe you do live out of home but you have to work so that you can pay your rent and you don’t like your job but you have no time to look for a new one because you’re also studying full time and trying to get to know your housemates better.

Maybe you’re on the right track to a career or vocation that you feel God is pulling you towards but it’s a long hard slog and you still beat yourself up every time you have a shower because you keep forgetting to turn that little blue hourglass timer and you’re using up precious water.

Maybe community living isn’t all great all the time and sometimes you want to kill your housemates but you just have to keep pushing on because that’s what all the books say and something good of it will come sometime but in the meantime the dirty dishes are piling up and you have to do them, again, and you wish you could go to soup van but you’re just so tired and sick of everything.

These are just some possibilities of where you might be at the moment.

Last night I went to the house of a couple who have, for the last four months, been a huge part of my journey.  I’ve been an intern with Surrender and we’ve been hanging out a lot.

These guys are a little bit like heroes. I wouldn’t mind if, in nine years, I would be in the same position they’re in at the moment. Hey, I wouldn’t mind if I was there now, to be honest. Everyone has these people. They’re the people you look at and think, hey, I wouldn’t mind being friends with you. I’d like to know your story. I have been hearing their story, little by little, over the past four months and particularly last night. And it’s been inspiring but it’s also a little daunting, because you do have to work to get to where you want to go.

And it takes time. Patience is a virtue, as they say, and it is; but it’s also a burden sometimes, when you just want things to happen. Particularly in this instant gratification society, where you don’t have to wait for what you want and if you do, it gets tossed. Where it’s not how hard you work but who you know.

What does all this have to do with cake, you may ask, and where’s mine? Well, see, last night also, in honour of our las official night together, I made cake. It’d been talked up to the hilt but it was also pretty easy, it just took a while to cook. 1 1/2 hours, the recipe said. Well, I figured, I’ll get there early, make it, stick it in the oven and by the time we’re drinking our mint, lemongrass and liquorice tea after dinner it’ll be ready!

Not quite. The making part was easy. But this oven, it’s a bit of a child and you have to baby it along. I got someone else to light it; we put the cake in and waited. It took a while to heat up but boy, by the time it did… well, let’s just say that the apples on top were slightly more caramelised than I might have wished. So we turned the oven down and covered it with foil, and waited.

And waited.

We wanted cake by this stage but it was still gooey in the middle and we were slightly impatient, I guess. I’ve got myself known as a bit of a baker and my friends wanted dessert!

We waited some more, talking over all this stuff – putting legs on God’s dream, living life as we wanted to, as we felt God wanted us to. Figuring out our values. Who we journey with and who we want to journey with, mentor figures, real-life heroes, books and movies to inspire us. Who’s your mob. What actions we can take in the everyday to live our values out, restricted as we are by our different circumstances.

Finally, the cake was ready. Slightly burnt, but tall and majestic and amazing looking; and amazing tasting, as well, I have to say. Moist and dense, apple-y and spicy, caramel chewy edges and soft middle. Incredible. Life-giving. Well worth the wait.

Just like everything we’d been talking over, all these things we wanted to happen in our lives – they take some work, and they have some hurdles. It looks like nothing’s happening, especially to those who want it to happen. But when it does happen, when you step back and look at what you’ve done in your life, it’s beautiful. And well worth the wait.

*While I did hear this story from someone important, it’s also over here, where some great people are sharing some great stuff about putting legs on God’s dream.

Apple Cake

Adapted, slightly, from Smitten Kitchen

Like I said, we had some trouble with the cooking time of this baby. So I’m going to give you the original baking times and temperatures, and just keep checking.

6 apples (we used organic Golden Delicious, I think Pink Ladies would also be perfect)

1 tbsp cinnamon

5 tbsp sugar

2 3/4 cup flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup orange juice

2 1/2 tsp vanilla

4 eggs

1 cup chopped walnuts, optional (I was all ready to use walnuts, and I completely forgot. I think it would be perfect.)

Peel, core and chop the apples. Deb says chunks which would be awesome, but we had an apple-peeler-corer-slicer which I love using so I used that instead. Whatever takes your fancy. Toss them with the cinnamon and sugar and set aside.

Preheat oven to 180ºC and butter a cake tin. I used a 20cm regular tin; Deb suggests a tube pan; a springform tin would also be fine. A 23cm cake tin also would work, ours rose about an inch above the top of the tin.

Whisk together the sugar, oil, vanilla and orange juice. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt (you can sift these first separately if you like, I never bother) and the eggs, one at a time.  (This would be the stage you add in your walnuts, if you were using them. Pecans, too would be lovely, I’m sure).

Pour about half the mixture into your cake tin, and scatter half the apples in cinnamon sugar over. Cover with the remaining mixture and top with the rest of the apples. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours.

Gobble up with your friends as you sip tea and contemplate life.