Until recently, I had never heard of Marlene apples, a leading Italian brand of gourmet apples grown in South Tyrol. The apples carry the PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) label which certifies they were grown in this beautiful region of the Alps — a region that profits from extremely favorable weather conditions (it boasts more than two thousand hours of sunlight per year!) and rich, fertile soils. This results in apples that are very aromatic, juicy and have an excellent bite. The apples are grown by approximately five thousand producers according to high quality standards. There are seven varieties of Marlene apples, each one with its own unique characteristics and special taste. From the Red Delicious with its deep ruby color and wonderful crunch to the Braeburn with its firm flesh (excellent for pies and other baked goods). In the Netherlands, you can find the apples at specialized produce shops. Though in my opinion apples are best enjoyed on their own as a snack or chopped into a green salad, I wanted to develop a recipe that uses two of my favorite apple varieties. I came up with a seasonal spiced apple cider using two of the juiciest apples, the tart Granny Smith and the aromatic Fuji, which also has a high sugar content and is very fragrant. I really think you’ll like this recipe, and once you see how easy it is, you’ll be making it as soon as the colder months roll around. It’s a wonderful seasonal drink and a highly recommended alternative to mulled wine, especially if you give it a little ‘oomph’ with a hit of dark rum. Without the booze, you can even consider it a health drink as it is chock full of flavonoids which are excellent at zapping free radicals! The only thing you will need is some patience. You will want the apples and aromatic spices to gently simmer for at least six hours and then steep overnight. After that, you strain everything well, bring back to the boil, sweeten, and add rum if desired. Cheers!
PS: This is NOT a sponsored post. I do not and will not accept money to promote brands with misleading claims. I received a press sample of Marlene apples and truly enjoyed them.
Spiced Apple Cider Serves 8
4 large Granny Smith apples, cored and cut into eighths
4 large Fuji apples, cored and cut into eighths
1 untreated orange, studded with 8 cloves
4 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
2 L water
3 tbsps honey
brown rum, if desired
Put all of the ingredients (except the honey and rum) in a large pan, bring to the boil, cover and reduce to a simmer. Allow the mixture to simmer very gently for 6 hours. Then, remove the pan from the heat and leave covered overnight (no refrigeration necessary). The next day, remove the orange and give everything a final mash with a potato masher. Remove the cinnamon sticks and star anise. Place a large piece of cheesecloth over a large bowl and carefully pour in the mixture. Allow most to drain and then squeeze out as much as possible with your hands. Wash the pan in which you cooked the cider. Pour the cider into the pan through a fine mesh sieve and bring to the boil. Stir in the honey and serve. Add brown rum if desired.
Autumn has really hit hard this past week, and although I am not a fan of rain, there is a certain beauty in intensely hued trees towering into dark skies. It is no longer raining today, but misty. The vivid yellows on the leaves of my cherry tree and the dusty pinks in my hydrangeas keep everything from looking all too gloomy. Nature always provides a perfect balance.
I harvested the last of my apples yesterday — a harvest which has been very generous. My tree has not only provided plenty of snack opportunities, but everything I’ve baked since early September has included freshly-picked apples. Like my apple muffins with confiture de lait, my apple-pecan bundt cakes with brown sugar-cinnamon glaze, the caramelized apple cake inspired by a Julie Andrieu recipe, and my Frenchified Dutch apple pie. Yesterday it was time to make a crumble, one of the easiest fruit recipes ever. What I love about this recipe is that it is relatively easy on the waistline (a good thing after last night’s meatloaf dinner!), and it calls for simple ingredients. I always like to serve my crumbles hot out of the oven with a tiny scoop of ice cream. The contrast is absolutely delightful. Here’s my recipe. Have a cozy, autumnal weekend!
Apple Crumble
Serves 3
3 medium apples, peeled and roughly chopped
2 tbsps flour
3 tbsps oatmeal
1 tbsp ground almonds
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of salt
1tbsp light brown sugar
35g butter
ice cream (either cinnamon or vanilla), to serve
Preheat the oven to 200C and lightly butter a small, round oven dish of approximately 18cm. Put the apples in the buttered dish. Mix the flour, oatmeal, ground almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and sugar in a bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips. Spread the mixture over the apples and bake for 30-35 minutes. Serve hot with a scoop of ice cream.
There is a saying I find very amusing. Perhaps you’ve heard it: “As American as apple pie.” But, you see, apple pie wasn’t always that American. Apples did not exist in America until they were introduced to the new land by Dutch and English colonists. Along with their apple and other fruit trees, they also brought recipes for richly-filled pies that were passed on from generation to generation and soon became part of American food culture. And although, it was probably the English who we can thank for making the first apple pies (the earliest recipe was found in an English cookbook dated 1381), it is actually the Dutch, in my opinion, who are worthy of the aforementioned phrase. Let me tell you why I think it should actually be: “As Dutch as apple pie.” Apple pie – though not the traditional one with a lattice crust – was the first thing I ate when I came to the Netherlands. My mother-in-law officially welcomed me to her home (and country) with a small, triangular-shaped apple pastry called ‘appelflap’. It was served with a very strong cup of coffee, and it was the first of many more apple pie experiences to come. You see, apple pie (and now I am referring to the thick variety served with whipped cream) is almost as synonymous with the food culture of the Dutch as their love for coffee, stamppot (vegetable and potato mash), beer with bitterballen (ragout-filled, deep-fried meatballs), and their almost iconic breakfast of ‘boterham met kaas…hagelslag…pindakaas…’ (bread with cheese… chocolate sprinkles…peanut butter). I can’t think of an occasion in which apple pie, or appeltaart, would be out of place. It can be served with mid-morning coffee or afternoon tea, it does exceptionally well as pastry of choice at birthday parties and all other kinds of celebratory gatherings and family reunions, and it can be found on the menu of almost every restaurant in the country. Ask my Dutch husband what his favorite dessert is when we go out to dinner and he’ll probably say ‘appeltaart’. By the way, for a proper Dutch apple pie, there’s no better place than Amsterdam, or more specifically, Café Winkel 43 on Noordermarkt. I have many fond memories of rounding off a stroll through the Saturday market with a thick slice of appeltaart and a glass of wine at this lively corner café in the city center. Their apple pie is everything it should be: thumb-sized chunks of firm and slightly sour apples, a buttery crust and a good dollop of whipped cream that isn’t overly sweet. However, you don’t have to travel to Amsterdam to taste a good apple pie. Keep reading! The first Dutch apple pie probably dates back to 1514 and can be found in the cookbook Notabel Boecxken van Cokeryen. It was quite different to the one we know today. The apples were baked under a thick layer of pastry, and after baking, some of this layer was removed and the hot apple filling was mixed with crumbledsuyckercoecken (sugar cookies). These small cookies, not sweetened with sugar as the name suggest, but honey, were flavored with warm spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom. After the cookie crumbs were mixed through the steaming apples, a drizzle of single cream would follow to give the pie a more refined flavor. By the 17th century, the Dutch cookbook De Verstandige Kok (1669) featured six different recipes for apple pies (accounting for one-quarter of all the pie recipes in the book) as well as a variety of other apple recipes. Apples were so much enjoyed that even poet Jacob Westerbaen wrote about common varieties back then such as the guldeling and the aagt:
“Mijn guldelingh en aeght, van liefelijcken aert (My guldelingh and aeght, of a sweet nature), Die geven lecker moes en spijse tot een taert (They make delicious sauce and can be used in a tart)”.
Most apple pies in the book featured a filling that was either made of applesauce or finely chopped sour apples, as the sweeter ones were eaten instead of being used in recipes. The apple pie recipes also called for currants, cinnamon and sugar. Paintings also attest to the appreciation for apples back in the Golden Age. Two beautiful examples are Pieter de Hooch’s A Woman Peeling Apples (1663) found in London’s Wallace Collection, and Cornelis Bisschop’s Girl Peeling an Apple (1667) found at the Rijksmusem.
A Woman Peeling Apples, Pieter de Hooch, 1663, Wallace Collection, LondonGirl Peeling an Apple, Cornelis Bisschop, 1667, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A century later, apple pies were on their way to becoming an integral part of Dutch food culture, though at first they were a pleasure mainly reserved for the upper class. It was during this time that the tradition of serving apple pie with coffee (also a drink for the affluent) was born. Today, every Dutch household has their own favorite recipe for appeltaart, though sadly, in this age of convenience, many resort to the ease of ready-made mixes. My recipe is made from scratch, and I must say I am quite picky. The crust must be buttery without being stodgy or ever becoming moist from the apples. The apples must be tart and preferably goudrenet (golden reinette), and the apple chunks musn’t be too small. Finally, to serve, nothing but freshly whipped cream will do. But there’s a catch! My recipe for Dutch apple pie has been Frenchified! I’ve soaked the raisins in Armagnac and dusted the apples in French flan powder and pain d’épices spices. I’m sure you’re not the least bit surprised!
Frenchified ‘Hollandse Appeltaart’ Serves 8
100g raisins
2 tbsps Armagnac
300 g all-purpose flour
110g granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
180 g cold butter, diced
2 egg yolks
2 tbsps cold sparkling water
2 tbsps breadcrumbs
1 kilo baking apples
1 packet sugar-free vanilla flan powder (3.5g)
2 tbsps light brown sugar
2 tsps pain d’épices spices
freshly whipped cream, to serve
Rinse the raisins. Place them in a small bowl, add the Armagnac and allow them to soak for two hours. Place the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter and continue to press on the pulse button until the mixture starts to resemble coarse breadcrumbs or oatmeal. Add the egg yolks and water and continue pulsing until the dough comes together. Remove from the bowl and shape into a ball. Wrap it in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for at least an hour. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C and take the dough out of the fridge. Butter and flour a 22 cm springform pan and line the bottom with baking paper. Roll ¾ of the dough (leave the rest in the fridge) out on a well floured surface to a circle of about 32 cm. Press this into the prepared pan, sprinkle the bottom of the dough with the breadcrumbs and pop in the fridge. Peel, core and chop the apples into rough chunks. Put them in a large bowl and mix them with the flan powder, brown sugar, pain d’épices spices and the Armagnac soaked raisins. Tip them into the prepared pan. Roll the rest of the dough out to a circle of about ½ cm thick. Cut into strips of about 1 cm wide. Place the strips on top of the apples in a criss-cross pattern. Carefully trim the edges and brush with whisked egg. Bake the pie on the lowest part of the oven for approximately 60-75 minutes. If the crust is getting too dark, you may want to cover it with tin foil. Once the pie is ready, remove it from the oven and place on a wire rack. Allow to cool before serving with freshly whipped cream.
This is a rustic kind of cake. Dense and buttery, it’s the type of cake that you serve on a Saturday afternoon when the leaves are golden yellow and red. You can eat it cold, but if you opt for warm, I strongly suggest you serve it with a scoop of cinnamon ice cream.
I can’t take all the credit for this one as it was made after being inspired by a recipe in Julie Andrieu’s book, Les Carnets de Julie. It’s a recipe handed down from a French granny, so you know it’s going to be good. Here’s my version:
Caramelized Apple Cake
Serves 4-6
110g flour
110g sugar
60g butter, softened
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
40g ground almonds
1 egg
1 1/2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into sections
100g butter
100g light brown sugar
Preheat the oven to 200C and butter an oval 10 1/2 x 8 inch dish. Using a standing mixer, mix the flour, sugar, softened butter, baking powder, ground almonds and egg. Once the dough comes together, take it out of the bowl and spread it over the buttered dish using your fingers. Top with the apples, pressing them into the dough. Bake the cake for 20 minutes. Shortly before the end of the cooking time, put the 100g butter and the light brown sugar in a small saucepan and allow the butter to melt while whisking. Once the mixture is smooth, it is ready. Take the cake out of the oven and pour the caramel sauce over it. Bake for an additional 12-15 minutes. You can serve the cake cold, or warm with a scoop of vanilla or cinnamon ice cream.