Pumpkin Apple Loaf

I love baking loaf bread. Super easy, super tasty.  And no recipe speaks autumn more than pumpkin bread.

The following makes one loaf. Often I will double a loaf recipe and freeze half the dough. Just thaw, warm to room temperature, and bake!

1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water
1 baking apple, peeled, cored, and diced (I used a Golden Delicious)

Combine dry ingredients, set aside. Combine wet ingredients, add in dry ingredients, fold in diced apple. Pour into a greased 9x5 loaf pan. Bake at 350 for around 60 minutes.

Fresh Apricot Scones

 Having already made a batch of apricot jam as well as canned apricots, I still had half my stash of fresh apricots left. What does one do with apricots? I ask my husband. Why not apricot scones? he replies.

How did I not think of that sooner. Such a man of my heart. I love, love, love scones and still have daydreams of the scones from Friday Harbor. Now, I wasn’t kidding myself about how much on my stash one batch of scones would use up, but at least I could get some homemade scones out of the deal.

Some googling revealed recipe after recipe that used dried apricots, but I finally found this one printed on a few different sites so it must be good right? Additionally, the original source is the Washington State Fruit Commission and it is Washington State apricots that I am trying to get rid of baking with. I must say they turned out pretty darn good for a girl who has only made one batch of very mediocre scones years ago.

2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, diced
1 cup diced fresh apricots (I ended up using 5 whole apricots)
1/4 cup milk
2 eggs

Mix dry ingredients (except for 1 tablespoon sugar) together, add in butter until mixture forms a crumble. Add apricots in, mix; then add in milk and eggs. Mix together. (My dough was pretty sticky by this point so I added probably another 3/4 cup flour).

Preheat oven to 450. On a lightly floured surface, knead dough gently about 10 times (I was using a ton of flour again). Place dough on a lightly oiled baking sheet and form into a 3/4 inch high circle. Sprinkle with remaining tablespoon of sugar then cut into 8 wedges.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes (mine needed the full 15 minutes) or until golden brown.

Canned Apricots

I still have a load of fresh apricots left from my 26 pound flat. You can only eat so much apricot jam, which I made a batch of yesterday. So it’s on to canning them, but seriously how many canned apricots can one person have? What in the world else can you do with apricots?? Oh my goodness, I bought way too many apricots. The seven pints I canned today used up maybe 5 pounds. I still have like 12 pounds left.

This time I followed a recipe I found in You Can Can by Better Homes and Gardens:

 

I desperately bought this after I foolishly thought I could check out a canning book from the library. Yeah… right. Height of the summer and I thought I could snag a canning book from the library, plucking it right off the shelf all lonely and patiently waiting for me. What was I thinking? :)

I needed a book and I needed one fast. I had fruit sitting at home ripening by the minute. This one has photos of every single recipe and the title helped calm my nerves after realizing 26 pounds is A LOT. Perfect. So even though it’s too new to have high Amazon ratings, I think I did pretty good. I had a hard time using it for jam, since I had to make it hard and go with no/low-sugar jam, which isn’t included in the book. But it made for a good cross- reference.

For canning apricots, I followed the directions for peaches, noting their tables saying that apricots need to be “hot packed” not “raw packed” like peaches. I crossed-referenced with this resource- National Center for Home Food Preservation out of the University of Georgia (definitely bookmark worthy!). Their directions matched, so I felt good to go.

Wash and cut ripe apricots in half or fourths. I ended up using about 5 pounds, which filled exactly the 7 pint jars I had.

Then pour in a large pot along with the syrup you want. I went with something between light and medium. I used 5 cups of water with 2 cups of sugar (Syrup ratios here). Bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, get your canning pot boiling lids and rings sterilized (as you can see my stove top is pretty busy).

Once boiling, begin pouring into sterilized jars, cover with lids and rings (this is called “hot packing”). I learned quickly to fill using both slotted spoon and a ladle in order to control the perfect amount of fruit verses syrup.

Place in canning pot and “process” (boil) according to altitude. I’m just above sea level, so 20 minutes was all I needed for pint-sized jars. Let cool on cooling rack. Check that lids seal.

Important note: These steps are merely my narration of the steps I took. These are not word-for-word directions from a reputable source (like a published book or government website). Please consult those when canning. I come across a couple of other blogs (even one from a very reputable local restaurant) with directions using the “raw packing”, which my sources specifically say not to do (don’t know why, maybe it’s harmless), proving to me not to follow a blog’s sole directions for anything canning related.

Jam Session

Two years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and loved every single page of it. She is a writer living on some acreage with her family and they decide to in-source all their food for a year by growing, raising, and making it themselves, buying it locally or, except for a few exceptions, go without. What an awe-inspiring experiment and a way of life. My husband would never go for it. I suppose neither would our HOA. To dream….

Anyways… One of the things I couldn’t wait to do when we got a house (besides renovate, paint, decorate, etc.) was to grow my own veggie garden and can. Well this spring was like the worst on record, so not much has happened in the veggie garden. I’m still holding out hope for my four tomato plants.

My mom canned a little when I was growing up. Nothing crazy like a full winter’s worth of green beans and pickles, but certain jams, applesauce, and things like pears and peaches. I wanted to at least try that.

Earlier this month she gave me her canner, so now I needed the fruit. I picked up some blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and apricots this weekend. After a detour for some jars, pectin, and extra sugar I was set…..

Until I got home….. and realized just how much I had bought. A “canning flat” of 26 pounds of apricots sounds like a deal until the recipe calls for 3 pounds to make one batch, which is like 5 to 7  jars. Opps.

After a few moments of freaking out, not to mention a sense of overwhelming-ness when every single recipe I consulted said something totally different (the directions that came with the pectin were soooo confusing I refused to use them), here’s what I came up with using the website pickyourown.org:

5 cups of fruit
1 package of no/low-sugar pectin
2 cups Splenda
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon butter

I made three low-sugar batches:
Strawberry-raspberry (3 cups, 1 cup)
Strawberry-raspberry-blueberry (2 cups, 1.5 cup, 1.5 cup)
Apricot

Wash and cut up fruit, then mash up. For the apricots, I ran them through the food processer. Pour in a large pot and bring to a rolling boil, stirring to keep from burning. Add the pectin and stir in. Bring back to a boil, add sugar, Splenda, and butter (this eliminates the foaming that occurs and helps prevent burning). Boil for 1 minute.

Fill sanitized jars and cover with lids and rings. Place in boiling water in a canning pot. Let sit for 5-7 minutes after it has returned to a boil.

Cool on cooling rack, checking the jar lids have sealed and the jam is setting.

This amount, makes anywhere from 5 to 7 8oz. jelly jars of jam so make sure you have enough plus some ready for each batch. I was quite surprised how each batch resulted in different amounts finished jam.

In the end, I think I did alright as a novice without any help. My last batch certainly was faster and more smoothly than my first. My next adventure will be in canning the rest of the apricots, since I still have like 20 pounds left. Stay tuned for that :)

Important note: The above directions are not obviously word-for-word of the directions I used. They can be found here. Please use a trusted source when canning and follow those directions. Because I used a no/low-sugar pectin, I had some freedom in the amount of sugar I did use, something not true with regular pectin, which requires a certain amount of sugar.

Strawberry Shortcake

Nothing says summer like shortcake. Strawberry in May, June. Peach in July, August.

Heaven.

I really like crumbly, flaky, fresh from the oven shortcake; none of this Twinkie crap they sell at the grocery store. Here's my super easy, favorite recipe:

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup milk

Mix dry ingredients, then add butter, then add milk until dough forms coarse crumbles. Drop onto greased baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Makes about 8 shortcakes.

While baking, rinse, hull, and slice several strawberries. Place in bowl, sprinkle with turbinado sugar (brand name: Sugar in the Raw), and let sit (even mush together a little bit). I swear, any baked good sprinkled with turbinado sugar is like ten times fancier. Letting the sugar mingle with the fruit for a few minutes does *magic* to the dish.

Take shortcakes from straight from oven, break open slightly on dish, top with berries and whipping cream. Best summer barbecue dessert ever.