A Sweet New Year
Gifting Apple Butter, Barbra Streisand, and Winemaker's Grape Cake
Welcome to the first doggy bag dispatch of the New Year! 2023 is OUT, 2024 is IN, and I, for one, am ready to party.
I love to make, give and receive food gifts. After moving in to my Toronto apartment in October, I got started on my Christmas gifts: homemade spiced apple butter.
Summer produces the big ticket preserving items - peaches, raspberries, cherries, blueberries, pickled veg of every kind - but when autumn rolls around, I am an apple butter fan. As a holiday gift, it’s a taste of the season. Flavoured like a cup of apple cider, the butter is spicy and warm, keeping your tastebuds toasty throughout the winter. At the 2022 UBC Apple Festival, I learned that many kinds of apples are ‘keepers.’ This means certain kinds of apples might not ripen until months after being picked! Some October apples will only be ready to eat now; a reminder of sunny fall crispness during frigid January.
Originating in medieval Germany, apple butter is an important historical foodstuff in the Eastern and Southern United States, especially within the Pennsylvania Dutch communities. Although many apples are able to keep for a while, making apple butter with those that won’t is a perfect way of preserving large quantities of orchard apples. Traditionally, apple butter is made outside, heating quartered and cored apples in large copper kettles on an open flame.
Although no dairy is involved, apple butter turns out thick, rich and caramelized, with a silky smooth texture. I canned all my butter into 250ml jars, and included this label with each gift:
I used a mix of McIntosh (my favourite apple) and Fuji apples for the butter, as you want softer apples that break down easily. Other good apple butter apples are Cortland, Jonamac, Golden Delicious and Braeburn apples.
In lieu of an apple butter kettle (gift guide for me…?), I use a slow cooker. Long, low and slow, baby!
Spiced Apple Butter
Ingredients:
6lbs mcintosh and fuji apples, cored and roughly chopped
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 cloves
1 star anise
1 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Method:
Add apples to slow cooker. Combine all ingredients together and pour on top of apples. Mix well.
Cook apples on low for 10 hours with the lid on. Stir occasionally.
After 10 hours, the apples mixture should be thick and dark brown. Remove the lid and cook, uncovered, for another 2 hours.
Immersion blend the apple butter until smooth.
Store your apple butter. In the freezer, apple butter will last about a year. If canned properly, an unopened jar will also last a year. In the fridge, apple butter will last about 2 months.
Mangia!
For another cheeky little morsel of Christmas cheer, I made a few small cookie boxes to give out, and kept some cookies to freeze and stash for a Christmas cookie treasure trove. Officially, all the stores have been cleaned out, but the last month was such a sweet time of cookie tidings.
My boxes were composed of 3 cookies. Orange and almond biscotti, rosemary salted shortbread, and the crown jewel: Camilla Wynne’s whipped shortbread thumbprints. 2023 was the year I discovered this recipe, and to me, it’s the perfect freaking cookie. Buttery, toothsome, beautiful, jammy. As she recommends in her book, Jam Bake, I used apricot jam as the thumbprint filling the first couple bakes…fab. But for a Christmas showstopper?! This girl did half an amarena cherry in the centre of each cookie, drizzled with dark chocolate…double fab.
Popcorn
For the past two months, I have been all consumed by Barbra Streisand’s memoir, My Name is Barbra. I’m listening to the audiobook version, which clocks in at 48 hours. At this point (37 hours in)…what else is there to say? She is everything to me.
Other than being Mrs. Musical Theatre herself (me…) she is also Mrs. Food (okay…me). Chinese food is her cuisine of choice, her favourite part about the UK is scones with clotted cream and fresh strawberries, she is constantly discussing the offerings of New York City delis and the quality of their knishes, blintzes and sandwiches. But if there is one thing I have learned about Babs, it’s that she looooooooves coffee ice cream. She eats whole pints in a sitting.Â
There is a Barbra Streisand homemade coffee ice cream recipe floating around the internet, using only 5 ingredients. For a true Barbra sundae, she tops her ice cream with a nutty chocolate sauce and pretzels. But her favourite coffee ice cream of all time is Brazilian Coffee from McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams in Santa Barbara, California. Apparently the flavour was discontinued, but after her memoir was published, McConnell’s brought it back for a limited time (also on the mf gift guide). California road trip??
Sexy Little Snack
At a Farmer’s Market in Vancouver last fall, one of the vendors had a recipe posted for ‘Winemaker’s Grape Cake’ by Patricia Wells. The author of many books and cookbooks focussing on simple, regional fare, I knew I had to try Wells’ recipe. I made it last year as a snacking cake and loved it, so after moving to Ontario, an excellent producer of table grapes, I was desperate to make this cake again. I baked it November with the last of my grapes, froze it, and have been enjoying it this month, with a glass of sherry.
Thanks for reading! Chat soon!! XOXO!