Apple Preserves - A Christmas Experiment (more Brandy and Grand Marnier)

I haven't made preserves before so please bare with me while I experiment with this recipe for Apple preserves. When complete these preserves should have a healthy Apple and Cranberry flavour with a light syrup of Vanilla, Brandy, and Grand Marnier. I've collected photos during my preparations, including steps with each picture.

4 cups of dried apple slices, adding dried cranberries to fill the gaps in the measuring cup.

In a large pot mix 8 cups of water with 2 cups of sugar, bring to a boil. This will serve as the syrup base.

slice in half 2 limes.

use a reamer to extract the juice.

slice lengthwise a vanilla bean, and harvest the seeds. Chop the remains of the vanilla bean in to quarters, this will be added to the syrup as well.

mix the vanilla seeds into the syrup

When the syrup is cool, add in a half cup of brandy and grand marnier.

Pour the syrup over the sliced dried apples and cranberries.

It's important that you use a non-metallic bowl for the fruits so that the flavour isn't tinged with a metallic taste.

Wrap the fruit & syrup mixture with plastic wrap, and let sit for 48 hours.

Sterilize preserve jars, then pour in fruit & syrup mixture.

Add lid to jar finger tight, then boil to ensure a sterile container.

The preserves are ready to enjoy!

I've taste tested the preserves on pound cake, and vanilla ice cream - it really goes well with either of them however I think next time I use Apples I'll have to slice them into smaller portions to make them easier to pick up with a fork or spoon.

I like this recipe, so those whom know me personally, perhaps you'll be seeing a jar of these Apple preserves come this December :)

Vegan Apple Torte

A friend of mine is heading away to attend law school this fall so I thought it would be appropriate to make her a tort cake (i know, lousy pun indeed).

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegan butter
1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 bananas
2 apple sauce containers (200ml)
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp soy milk
2 or 3 apples sliced
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp powdered sugar
2 tbsp chopped pecans

To start I cleaned, skinned, then sliced up 3 apples, collecting the slices into a ziploc bag and shaking them with cinnamon.

 Setting aside the apples I prepared the batter -- a simple mixture. All the ingredients just go into the mixer and blends until smooth - the key to this recipe is in the apple sauce, bananas, and baking powder, these act as egg replacers from a standard torte recipe. The bananas help add moisture to the batter, while the apple sauce provides flavour, the baking powder assists in leavening the torte. The batter complete, I take the apple slices and arrange them on the bottom of my punt pan, then pour in the batter.

 Bake for 30 minutes at 350F, until a toothpick can pierce and come clean from the torte.

When you slice the torte for serving each slice should have a few whole slices of cinnamon coated apples.

I hope you enjoy this recipe :)

Brandy-Apple and Scotch-Strawberry Rugelach

10 year old Brandy and 30 year old Scotch in your cookies? Yes my dear reader, these cookies are for real :)

It was my turn this week to provide cookies for cookie night, I think I've topped my previous efforts...

Ingredients (pastry):

1 cup butter

8 oz cream cheese

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups flour

1 cup bread crumbs

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 large egg

Ingredients (filling):

1 cup sliced dehydrated apples

1 cup sliced dehydrated strawberries

1 cup brandy

1 cup scotch

1/2 sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Re-hydrate the fruit with liquid of choice for 48 hours, then puree to spreadable consistency.

 The first step in this cookie was to re-hydrate the fruit. I chose to use brandy for the apples and scotch for the strawberries. To do this just pour the sliced dehydrated fruit into a bowl, add liquor, a quarter cup of sugar, and 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and nutmeg. Then stir, wrap in plastic, and let sit for 48 hours. The fruit will plump. Once sufficiently soaked, blend the fruit until its a spreadable consistency.

Add cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. 

Roll out dough to about 5 to 8 mm thickness.

 The dough is very simple to make, just blend butter, cream cheese, and salt together. Let this mixture chill for an hour before attempting to roll out into a disc.

Apply egg wash, then sprinkle cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. Spoon on heaps of filling.

 The rolled out dough needs some preparations. First we'll need to apply an egg wash, then dust the dough with cinnamon and nutmeg. We'll also need to put together a sweet filler. In a bowl mix together bread crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. With the dough prepared, spread out a generous helping of fruit filling, then coat that with the bread crumb mixture.

Use a pizza wheel to slice into 8 wedges.

 The next step is to slice the dough into wedges using a pizza cutter.

Roll from outside edge to inside tip.

 Each wedge is rolled from the wide end towards the tip. This produces a cookie that is shaped like a croissant.

These strawberries were de-hydrated, the 30 year old Scotch appears to have re-invigorated them.

 Repeat the above steps for each type of fruit filling you'd like to try out.

Apples vs Strawberries: Everyone Wins! 

Once you've processed all of your cookies, it's time to start baking. Preheat your oven to 325F, then bake the cookies for 30 minutes until golden brown.

After 30 minutes at 325F.  

Sweet, puffy, crumbly, and oh yes, they burn going down :)

These cookies went over very well with my friends. I'd suggest adding some powdered sugar to the tops for presentation. I hope you enjoyed this recipe :) 

Apple Cookies

First Post!

This is my first post to my new blog on cookies. I've been sharing my hobby with friends for the last while and have got to point that posting the odd photo on Facebook is not enough.

A fair warning; most of the cookies I make are 'geeky', deal with it, I'm a programmer :P

For my first cookie I will be making a simple cutter cookie (a cookie that you cut into shapes using a cookie cutter):

The Cookie Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2.5 cup flour
• 2 tbsp magic powder
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup butter (melted)
• 1 tbsp lemon zest

Mix thoroughly all ingredients in a bowl, then once combined, place in refrigerator for 30 minutes. Once the dough is firmed up it will be ready for rolling. Sprinkle some flour onto a flat surface and use a standard rolling pin to roll the dough (the flour prevents the dough from sticking to the pin and/or surface).

Next choose a shape you want to make. In my case I chose to make the an Apple. I used a 7cm diameter round cutter to make the initial circle, then a smaller 5cm diameter cutter to carve the bite out, reusing it as the leaf. For the leaf to attach on properly I just cut a notch out with a paring knife and trimmed the bottom to form the apple shape. Yes, to make three dozen took a long time :)

The next step after forming all the cookies was to bake them in the oven on 375F for about 20 minutes (until they turned golden brown).

Once I had made about three dozen cookies I decided that I would glaze them in one of four different colours.

The Icing:

• 2 whole egg whites
• 4 cups icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice.

The final result was a very light cookie with a soft icing glaze. On completing this batch I questioned my choice of using lemon zest to flavour the cookie batter, cinnamon and a small amount of apple juice may have been more in theme... the nice thing with these cookies is that I can always modify the recipe next time I make them.

Hope you enjoyed this cookie! :)