Birthday Recipes

I wanted to do some cooking while we were at Sea Ranch.  I like to cook but cooking dinner from the fridge after work with limited time and energy is different than planning a recipe, having an open-ended time frame and nothing else to do!

We made a batch of macaroni and cheese from The Mac + Cheese Cookbook that Rem got for Christmas and it was good but I didn’t make the best choice in the cheeses I bought.  The cheese I picked out was pretty mild and the overall dish was rich and creamy but fairly bland.  But good, as my dad used to say!  We’ll try it another time with different cheese and maybe some other tweaks.

This Sunset magazine was in the magazine bin and when I saw the recipe for Dutch Baby, that was my choice for my birthday breakfast.  It is baked in the oven and should puff up rather dramatically, but our smaller version didn’t get that puffy.  It was very good and I’ll try it again in a different baking vessel, perhaps a round pie plate.  I didn’t add sugar to the batter but I suggest you do if you try it and I’ll add it when I make it again.  I looked at several other recipes and some had sugar in the batter.  I’ve added it to the ingredient list.

Dutch Baby

Adapted from Sunset Magazine

Note: This is for a 2-3 qt. baking dish, ours was 2 quart – Sunset suggests a shallow, oven-proof pan, no more than 3 inches tall – see recipe link for a larger version.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup butter

3 eggs

3/4 cup milk

3/4 flour

2 tablespoons sugar

Toppings:

Powdered sugar, lemon wedges, honey, and fruit as desired.

Directions:

Pull out oven rack(s) so only lowest rack remains. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Put butter in 2 to 3 quart baking dish (see note, above) and set in oven to melt.

While butter is melting, mix batter.  Put eggs in a blender or food processor and whirl on high speed for 1 minute.

With motor running, slowly add first the milk.  Then, still slowly, add the flour and the sugar.

Continue to process for 30 seconds. (If you don’t have a blender or food processor, you can mix the batter in a bowl, beating eggs until blended and frothy; gradually beating in the milk, flour and sugar.)

Remove the baking dish from the oven, the butter should be melted by now, pour in the batter and return pan to oven.

Bake until puffy and well browned, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Dust pancake with powdered sugar.  Cut into wedges and serve with lemon wedges, more powdered sugar, fruit such as blueberries and a drizzle of honey.

I expect to try this dish again and will post if I create a more puffy pancake.  It really was a delicious treat with a side of apple sausage and some beautiful blueberries on top.

For dinner I concocted something that was good but a little quirky and not really quite what I had in mind.  I don’t have a recipe because I was throwing it together. Rem had enjoyed ravioli for our anniversary dinner and I thought we could make giant ravioli using won ton wrappers or skins, like my niece Miriam used when she was on The Sam Livecast cooking contest.

The filling was a combination of pork sausage (I would have picked plain ground pork if the grocery store carried it), minced fresh ginger, finely chopped cilantro, green onion and arugula and some soy sauce.  It ended up being fairly salty (we had a little leftover filling and I made some small meatballs that we cooked up and ate), but with the pasta, it wasn’t too much.

Each ravioli was made with two won ton skins and sealed with egg white.  We made them in the afternoon and lay them out on baking sheets covered in foil sprayed with non-stick spray. I put them in the refrigerator until we were ready to cook them.

For the sauce (this is really where I got off base), I sauteed some diced vegetables (onion, carrot, celery and fennel) until they were nice and caramelized, then added some red wine and cooked it until it was reduced by about half.  I strained out the vegetables and wasn’t really delighted by the resulting sauce.  I ended up adding some brown sugar and some soy sauce and made it into a terriyaki-type sauce.  It was pretty tasty but didn’t work that well with the pasta of the ravioli/won tons.

I also roasted butternut squash, carrots, onion and fennel and Rem sauteed kale.  We boiled salted water to cook the giant ravioli about 5 or 6 at a time, each took about 5 minutes to cook, maybe a little less.  I drizzled the sauce over the won ton and the roast vegetables, and added a spoonful of the diced veggies I’d strained out of the sauce to the kale.  Green onions garnished the won ton.

I had some leftover won ton for my lunch.  A few splashes of soy sauce and toasted sesame oil were delicious and exactly the right sauce for the dish.  I’ll look up more recipes using reduced wine sauces and see if I can come up with a better combo for future kitchen adventures

The biggest success of the day was dessert.  I thought about different things I might make: chocolate souffle and chocolate lava cake were two ideas that came to mind.  But for the two of us in super-relaxed Sea Ranch mode, I wanted something more simple.

Back to the Sunset Magazine 25 Best-Ever Recipes article. This one looked pretty wonderful: Coffee Sundaes with Salted Peanut Butter Caramel.  I love coffee ice cream and I don’t have it very often.  When we have ice cream at home we almost always get vanilla because we both like it.  But for my birthday I decided I wanted coffee ice cream!

The recipe in the printed magazine had a side-bar recipe for caramel sauce.  The online recipe has you start with purchased caramel sauce.  But I did a little searching on the Sunset Magazine site and found the caramel sauce that is the starting point for the Salted Peanut Butter Caramel.  They call it DIY Caramel Sauce.

Since I came home, I’ve looked at quite a few other caramel sauce recipes online and there are many to read. In fact, I’ve made another caramel sauce that is different than the one I used for this sundae and it is also wonderful.  But it makes a thicker sauce and since our end result includes peanut butter, it is better to start with a thinner sauce.

That said, when I make it again, I think I will try it with a little less heavy cream because it was a pretty thin sauce. Thin but good. This is the recipe, from Sunset Magazine.  You may want to try it with 3/4 of a cup whipping cream.

DIY Caramel Sauce

Ingredients:

2/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons butter

1 cup whipping cream

Directions:

Put sugar and butter in a heavy saucepan and cook over high heat, stirring until is has an amber hue, 2 to 4 minutes.

Slowly stir in whipping cream.  It will bubble up.  Cook, stirring until it boils.

My mixture was somewhat separated and I noticed some of the caramelized sugar and butter mixture wasn’t emulsifying with the cream to form a cohesive sauce, but was in hard lumps.  I was able to get most of the lumps out with cooking and stirring, pressing lumps with the back of a wooden spoon.  I ended up pouring the sauce through a fine mesh strainer to remove a few lumps that didn’t seem like they were going to come out.

Keep leftover sauce in the refrigerator. (If you are anything like me, you won’t have leftovers for long).

Let the caramel sauce cool,  and then go on to transform it into the luscious sundae topping.  Actually, let me be very clear: it is luscious and sundae-worthy as is.  But if you like peanut butter, you will probably want to go all the way with this recipe.

Coffee Sundae with Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce

Adapted from Sunset Magazine

Note: The original recipe is called “Salted Peanut Butter Caramel;” I tasted the sauce before adding salt and didn’t think it would benefit from a teaspoon of salt.  However, if I’d been at home, I would have sprinkled on a few flakes of Maldon or other sea salt over the sundae (before the whipped cream).

Ingredients:

2/3 cup caramel sauce (homemade from recipe, above, or good-quality store bought)

1/3 cup chunky old-fashioned peanut butter

1 pint coffee ice cream

1 cup sweetened whipped cream

1/4 cup salted, roasted peanuts

Optional: A pinch of Maldon or other sea salt

Directions:

Heat caramel sauce in a small saucepan over medium heat until sauce is warm but not boiling.

Stir in peanut butter until incorporated.

Scoop 1/2 cup of ice cream into each bowl.

Top with 1/4 quarter cup peanut butter caramel sauce, a sprinkling of sea salt flakes (if desired), 1/4 cup whipped cream,  and 1 tbsp. peanuts.

This combination of flavors and textures had me scraping the bottom of the bowl.  I had a second (smaller) sundae the next day after lunch.  We were heading home and the coffee ice cream wasn’t coming with us.  Before the end of Birthday Month, I’ll buy another pint and make another batch of Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce.

Thanks for your visit.

Christmas Crunch

This is an easy recipe that goes together pretty quickly.  If you need to bring something to a party or want to give a little homemade treat out to friends, this might be just the ticket.

It is a sweet-salty combination of cereal, pretzels, nuts and Craisins enhanced with red and green M&M’s.  Melted white and peanut butter baking chips stick it all together into delicious, munchable nuggets. It might even increase your Christmas spirit if you are finding yourself in need of a little holiday boost.

I’ve seen several similar recipes and since I’m giving some away I have made a few batches with different variations myself.  I think this is the right balance of all the ingredients.

Christmas Crunch

Adapted from the back of the Chex box

– 1 batch serves Santa and 9 reindeer

Ingredients:

7 cups Rice Chex cereal, divided

2 cups small pretzels, broken in pieces

1.5 cups white baking chips

5 oz. (1/2 bag) peanut butter baking chips

1 12-oz. bag red and green M&M’s

¾ to 1 cup roasted, salted pistachios or peanuts

¾ cup Craisins or other dried, sweetened cranberries (this is half a package of Craisins)

Directions:

Measure 4 cups of cereal into a large bowl.  Add broken pretzels.

Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper or foil.

In a medium-sized, microwave-safe bowl, heat the white baking chips until melted.  Different microwaves have different power, so I suggest doing it in stages of about 15 to 20 seconds at a time and stir after each time.  I use mine at 50% power and it takes about 1.5 minutes.  The chips will hold their shape, even when they’re nearly melted.  Stir and make sure they are completely melted and smooth.

When the white baking chips are completely melted, pour over the bowl of cereal and pretzels and stir together to coat.  Spread the coated cereal and pretzels out on one baking sheet to set.

Put the remaining 3 cups of cereal in the large bowl and the peanut butter baking chips in the medium bowl.

Melt the peanut butter baking chips in the microwave, and when it is melted, coat the remaining cereal, as above.

Spread the peanut-butter-chip-coated cereal onto the second baking sheet to set.

When the cereal has set (you can speed this up by putting the baking sheet with coated cereal in the fridge for a few minutes), break up coated the cereal and pretzels into a large bowl, add M&M’s, Craisins and nuts and stir gently to combine.

I like how the red and green of the M&M’s stand out in the mix.

If you want to make this recipe even easier, add the M&M’s and Craisins into the bowl before combining with the melted white baking chips and proceed as written. Add the nuts to the second batch before adding the peanut butter baking chips. This will make a more homogenized mix but it’s equally delicious.

Store in an airtight container.

I packed some into cellophane bags to give away.  I wrote labels and added some cute Santa and Snowman clothespins I picked up a few years ago.

Thanks for stopping by.

Day 8: Cardamom Pecan Cookies

When I was browsing sites for ideas for this month of projects, I saw a cardamom cookie.  I love cardamom but have never used it in cooking.  I bookmarked the site but when I revisited it later, the cookie seemed overly complicated. Then I found some recipes for Lemon Ice Cream and I thought a good a simple, buttery cookie flavored with cardamom would go with Lemon Ice Cream.

I looked around and found a recipe from the wonderful Smitten Kitchen. Deb at Smitten Kitchen offers up a slice-and-bake cookie recipe that is the base for many add-in options.  I decided to give it a try with the addition of cardamom and chopped pecans.  Smitten Kitchen uses unsalted butter which I know a lot of recipes call for.  I don’t usually have it on hand, so I used my regular, salted butter and omitted the pinch of salt she added.

I’m happy with the results but after 30DoC is done and I bake another batch, I’d make a few changes: I’ve been thinking about some chopped, candied ginger to balance the cardamom and add a little more sweetness. A bit of orange zest would also go well with the flavors in this cookie. Another option would be to roll the dough into balls and coat the finished cookies in powdered sugar, much like a Mexican Wedding Cookie.  The recipe as it stands is not very sweet.

In the meantime, I was right about the combination of the cookie with yesterday’s Lemon Custard Ice Cream.  The short, buttery cookie with the cardamom flavor familiar from chai tea or perhaps from Nordic baked goods is a delicious match with the refreshing zing of the lemon in the ice cream.

Let me point out something that should have been obvious this morning when I started making the cookies.  I’d read quickly through the recipe, I knew the dough needed to be chilled.  But it is chilled twice: first you make the dough and divide it into two balls and chill for 30 minutes.  Then you roll it into logs, chill for two hours and proceed to slice and bake.  So plan accordingly!

Or…do as I did after the initial 30 minutes and pinch off balls of dough, place on parchment covered baking sheet and press with a sugar-dipped glass and bake.  They turned out fine and I was able to bring them along when I went to see my mom this morning.

Cardamom Pecan Cookies

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Makes about 50 cookies

2 sticks butter, at room temperature

2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

2 large egg yolks, at room temperature (you can put the eggs into a bowl of hot tap water for a few minutes to take off the chill)

1 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon cardamom

1/2 cup finely chopped (or ground) pecans

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

granulated sugar for topping (optional)

Smitten Kitchen has many suggestions of options to add in to the basic recipe or to roll the dough logs in before slicing.  For example, grated orange zest and dried cranberries, or mini chocolate chips.  If you omit the nuts, add another 1/2 cup of flour.

Directions:

Beat butter until fluffy.  Add the confectioners sugar and beat until combined.  Beat in the egg yolks and vanilla extract.  Beat in cardamom and pecans.  Add the flour and beat until just combined.  Don’t over beat.  I turned off the mixer and finished stirring in the flour at the bottom of the bowl.

Scrape the dough into a ball, divide the ball in half, wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

If you are going to make these as slice-and bake cookies than drop down to the next paragraph.  If you are ready to bake now, preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Pinch off small pieces of dough and make little balls (about 1 inch) and place on parchment covered baking sheet.

Dip the bottom of a glass in granulated sugar in a small bowl and press on balls of dough.  Bake for about 12 minutes until set but not browned.  Cool on racks.

Back to the slice-and-bake directions: Roll each ball of dough into a log that is about 1 inch to 1 1/4 inch thick.  It was fairly sticky so I found it easiest to do this on a piece of parchment paper.  Cover dough logs in plastic and chill for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  If you want to coat the log in something (chopped nuts, poppyseeds), this is the time to do it. Slice logs into pieces 1/3 inch thick and place on parchment covered baking sheet.  Bake for about 12 minutes until set but not browned. Cool on racks.

Dough logs can be wrapped tightly and kept in the fridge if you want to just slice off a few cookies at a time and bake.

Day 8 from last year: Ice Cream Sandwiches.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love my ice cream maker?

Thanks for stopping by.

Pumpkin Butter

 

I made “pumpkin” butter (Winter Squash Spread?) using the leftover puree from my Not-Just-Pumpkin Pie: it is a combination of baked pumpkin, butternut and delicata squash.

Not-Just-Pumpkin Butter

Ingredients:

1 Butternut Squash

3 Delicata Squash

1 small Pumpkin

Brown Sugar, to taste

Spices, such as Cinnamon, Ginger & Cloves, to taste

A pinch of Salt

Lemon Juice (optional)

The directions for the puree are the same as in the pie recipe and I’m repeating them here:

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Wash the pumpkin, delicata and butternut squash, cut in half, scrape out seeds and stringy flesh.  Place cut side up or down (either way works fine) on baking sheets covered with parchment paper or foil.  Bake until very tender when pierced with a knife, 35 to 60 minutes.  When tender let cool on pan until cool enough to handle.  Scoop out insides and discard the skin.  Process in Cuisinart or other food processor until all squash is pureed.

At this point you can make pie filling with part of that yummy puree and with the leftovers, you can make what I’ve been calling Pumpkin Butter but is more accurately Winter Squash Butter or Spread.  I guess I’ll copy the pie recipe and call it “Not-Just-Pumpkin Butter”.  You could also skip the pie and make a bigger batch of the butter.  Either way is fine.

Keeping in mind the puree will shrink down quite a bit, so you want to start with at least 4 cups.

• Sweeten and spice the puree to your taste but keep in mind it will be concentrated with slow baking, so use a light hand.  For 4 cups of puree I used 1/2 cup of brown sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, about a quarter teaspoon of cloves and a good chunk of freshly grated ginger. 
• Scrape it into a glass casserole dish and bake it in a low oven (250) for 3 to 3.5 hours, stirring every hour until it is quite thick and dark.
  

  Puree spread in baking dish, ready to bake

  

  Looking good after 2 hours.

• Taste and adjust sweetness and spice level.  

I added a pinch of salt after it was finished cooking and reduced down to a thick spread and a squirt of fresh lemon juice to balance the rich, creamy, pumpkin-y flavor.

It makes a delicious, thick, jammy kind of spread that is really delicious on pancakes, raisin toast or cinnamon/raisin bagels.

Done!

I’m sorry I didn’t take prettier pictures but believe me, the results are really wonderful.

Thanks for stopping by.

Not-Just-Pumpkin Pie

I’ve never liked pumpkin pie.  I like pumpkin muffins and pumpkin bread, but pumpkin pie is too wet and eggy for my taste, and I’d rather have apple or pecan pie, thank you.  On the other hand, I love the mellow sweetness of baked winter squash (such as acorn or butternut) plain or dressed up with a little butter and even cinnamon and brown sugar.  I decided I wanted to make a pie that captured that baked squash flavor but avoided getting too custard-y.  In other words a pumpkin (or pumpkin-type) pie that I would love!

Since I like baked winter squash I knew I would be using butternut squash in my pie.  I also had another one, new to me, that I had just tried: delicata squash.  This is smaller than butternut squash and it doesn’t have such a tough skin.  It is even sweeter and creamier than the delicious butternut.  If you can find it, you might give it a try.

While looking at different pumpkin pie recipes online to see one I might adapt, I found this recipe for pie dough at Comfortably Domestic and the name was enough to convince me to try it: No Excuses Pie Dough.  I’ve made pie crust from scratch before but I’m not a pro at it and so usually opt for the refrigerator kind that comes folded or rolled – Trader Joe’s makes one and I’ve also used Pillsbury crust.

I convinced Rem to help me with this project and we decided to spread it out over several evenings.  The first evening we baked a pumpkin and a delicata squash in the oven and whipped up a batch of No Excuses Pie Dough.  It was as fast and easy as the recipe said it would be.  However, I kind of messed it up.  More on that later.

The pumpkin was one we bought for Halloween and didn’t carve but sadly once roasted we agreed it was bland, stringy and watery.  The next evening after work I came home with a butternut squash, more delicata squash and chose another (smaller) pumpkin to try.

I cooked the squash until it was very tender (the delicata was done before the other two) and let it cool enough that I could handle it.  Then I scraped the flesh out of the skin and pureed it in the food processor.  The pumpkin was more watery than than the other two so I let the pulp sit in a fine mesh sieve to drain a bit before I pureed it.

The recipe I adapted for my Not-Just-Pumpkin Pie has more pulp than most pumpkin pie recipes.  It also has has just  less heavy cream than typical pumpkin pies.  Instead of two eggs it has one egg but three egg yolks. The texture is dense and creamy, and the pie is rich with a deep flavor of pumpkin and squash warmed with fresh ginger and other spices.

While the pumpkin, delicata squash and butternut squash were baking, I pulled out a disc of No Excuses Pie Dough to roll out.  I’d read that blind baking or partially pre-baking pie crust when making a custard type pie was a good idea to avoid soggy or underdone crust.  Since I wanted the best pie ever, I decided to include this step.  Bad idea.  I rolled out the dough, put it in my glass pie plate and pricked it a few times with a fork.  I put it in the oven while the squash were still baking and checked it after about 4 or 5 minutes.

The dough had melted down the sides of the pie plate to the point that the sides were almost gone! All the buttery pastry had slid down into a soft puddle of dough. I grabbed it out of the oven, I mushed the melted dough part way back up the sides of the pie plate.  I had a thick, creamy, lovely pie filling waiting to bake and I wasn’t going to let a little melted pie crust stop me.

It was clear that the filling was going to go higher up the sides of the dish than the crust, so I spritzed some nonstick spray on the sides of the pie plate and poured in the filling and put it in the oven with my fingers crossed.  If and when I make this again, I will consider doing it in a graham cracker crust.

Not-Just-Pumpkin Pie

Adapted from Lauren Weisenthal’s recipe on Serious Eats

Ingredients:

4 cups pureed, baked winter squash (combination of butternut, delicata and pumpkin)

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 egg

3 egg yolks

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger root (or 1 tsp. ground ginger)

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp. cloves

pinch salt

pinch black pepper

1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Wash the pumpkin, delicata and butternut squash, cut in half, scrape out seeds and stringy flesh.  Place cut side up or down (either way works fine) on baking sheets covered with parchment paper or foil.  Bake until very tender when pierced with a knife, 35 to 60 minutes.  When tender let cool on pan until cool enough to handle.  Scoop out insides and discard the skin.  Process in Cuisinart or other food processor until all squash is pureed.

[Note: One butternut squash, two or three delicata squash and one small pumpkin will yield more cooked squash than you need for this recipe.  You have several options of how to make the best of the leftovers: freeze and use later; bake a second pie; bake in custard cups; make pumpkin butter.]
Turn oven down to 350 degrees. Combine all the ingredients up to the crust, stirring with a fork until well mixed.  Pour into unbaked crust and bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until just barely set in center.  Cool before serving.

Serve with sweetened whipped cream with a bit of vanilla extract added.

Baked in Custard Cups
I haven’t tried this but my sister and my parents enjoy baking pumpkin pie filling in custard cups so they skip the crust entirely.  Make pie filling, as in recipe above, pour into custard cups up to an inch from the top.  Set in baking pan and pour hot water into pan to the level of the pumpkin mixture.  Bake in 350 oven 25 to 30 minutes until center is barely jiggly when custard cup is gently shaken.

However you fix this recipe – whether in a crust as a traditional pie or in custard cups, your house will smell heavenly while it is baking.

I’ll write about Pumpkin Butter in another post soon.  Thanks for stopping by!

Dad’s Apple Butter

Apple Butter seems to taste best if you can get the apples for free.  My dad has no problem knocking on a homeowner’s door if he sees a tree in their yard with apples rotting on the ground underneath.   However, this year he isn’t yet out taking walks through the neighborhood, so he doesn’t have a stash of apples rotting fragrantly in crumpled paper bags in the corner of the kitchen.

I wanted apple butter for myself and loved the idea that my dad felt well enough to tackle the task of making a batch with my mom, so I decided to provide some apples. The first bag was purchased at the Marin Farmer’s Market at a discount as they were “cosmetically challenged” (the photo is from a week later at a different booth with a higher price).   I’d also snagged about 8 or so bruised or wormy apples from a free bin at the Market.    At my choir rehearsal, one of the singers had a big basket of apples from a tree in her yard that I was lucky enough to receive the bulk of (thanks, True).  As I was taking all of these apples to my folks’ house I saw a brown paper grocery sack on an overturned bucket by the curb with “Free Apples” scribbled on the bag.  I pulled over, hopped out and grabbed the bag.  So not every apple was free, but close enough!

Here in his own words is the way my dad makes Apple Butter:

Now you take a bunch of apples and wash ‘em.  [Note from Dianne: a bunch was probably half to three-quarters of a grocery sack]

Now you quarter ‘em, but leave the peels on and just cut out any rotten spots, seeds and core.  Leave as much of the apple as possible. Chunk up into pieces – about the size of the end of your thumb

Fill a large heavy-bottom pot to the brim with apple chunks, add about 1 cup of water.

Heat on high, turn to slow simmer, and watch out for bubbles, they’re HOT

Add water if needed to keep apples from burning.

Stir frequently – don’t go off and read a book!

Cook down until all chunks are soft. Different apples have different moisture content, keep testing.

Put some on saucer to cool and taste – different apples need different amount of sweetening

Add approximately ¼ to ½ cup sugar (or to taste).

Add ½ teaspoon cinnamon and cook for a short time to meld.

Run batches of hot, cooked apple chunks through food mill or food processor, if using mill, you have to go backwards sometimes to unclog.

Pour milled applesauce into baking dish or casserole (or bottom of broiler pan)

Bake at 250 to 275 degree oven.  Now go read your book.

After an hour, stir sauce, scraping down sides, continue to bake 4 to 6 hours, watching and stirring occasionally.  Taste part way through cooking time and adjust sweetener and spice.

Resulting sauce will be a rich brown with a thick texture. Enjoy!

It takes some time and effort, but the rewards (not to mention the heavenly fragrance) are hard to beat.  I enjoyed fresh Apple Butter with cottage cheese (all the better because it was from mom and dad’s open jar and I got to take mine home unopened).

It is wonderful with peanut butter on toast or on pancakes.  I opened my jar Sunday morning and had it on waffles.

Delicious!

Thanks for stopping by.

And thanks, Dad, for sharing your recipe for Apple Butter.