om nom nom straight from the spoon

making honey apple butter

“So what is apple butter anyway,” you ask suspiciously, because frankly that sounds pretty weird. It’s not actually all that weird. It’s really a kind of apple jam. It’s a baked reduction and you can flavour it in a bunch of different ways and I’m getting better at it and it’s getting better as I do. I believe it’s called ‘butter’ because it’s lovely and smooth with maybe just a hint of apple graininess in the texture, not because there’s any actual butter involved. It preserves FOREVER–the stuff stays good,…

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crabapple jelly & jam, blackberry jam / apple jam & jelly, strawberry jam, raspberry jam

apples apples everywhere

We picked apples on Sunday. This warped panorama does not do justice to the numbers of apples currently residing in our entryway: The bag in the back corner, and the white box, which is like 2×3′ or something, are also full of apples. There are So Many Apples. There’s a fairly large bag already missing, too, as I sent one home with my sister. A friend just dropped by and took away the small box next to the plant pots and the black bag at the foot of the photo,…

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worst. cooking. ever.

I have, in a really stunning run, made two bad batches of fudge in a row and followed it up with pie crust worse than what I made at Thanksgiving, which was, up until then, easily the worst I’d ever made. But that’s okay, because the pie I then made was too sweet, too! Srsly. *dies in a pit* I’ve now gotten all the necessary ingredients to make experimental allergy-safe fudge for my friend’s dairy-and-eggs-allergic son, and since I was in the market anyway I also got enough to make…

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Kitsnacks: Lemon Curd

You would think I would know by now not to post “I made this” food stuff without also posting the recipe. :) Someone asked, so here’s my recipe: Lemon Curd 2 egg yolks 2 whole eggs 3 oz (6 tbs) butter, room temperature 1 to 1.5 cups sugar the juice of 3 lemons (1/2 to 3/4ths cups lemon juice, depending on the size of the lemons; adjust sugar accordingly) Cream butter & sugar until fluffy. Add eggs & egg yolks & mix again. Slowly add lemon juice. The mixture will…

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a feast of strawberries

I was in town yesterday and saw a fruit vendor with 1-kilo flats of strawberries for €5 each, which I thought was an excellent deal. I bought two, came home with them, and went back out not much later to get (other things also, but) four more. The young lady at the booth looked at me a bit askance when I came up and asked for four flats. I explained I was making jam, and she said, “Oh! Okay. I was wondering if you maybe had a bit of an…

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