Pebbernodder

This recipe was originally published elsewhere but can no longer find the blog to credit it. This is the recipe I use for pebbernodder and it is much enjoyed.

"Eva Jersild's Pebbernodder

This makes a stiff, heavy dough that, by the third cup of flour, is difficult to mix. I've burned out more than one hand mixer during pebbernodder season. Grandma Jersild use to do it all by hand.

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 cup butter

1 egg

1 tablespoon molasses

3 cups flour

2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cardamom

1 teaspoon cloves

pinch pepper

Cream together brown sugar, butter and molasses. Add egg and mix.

Sift together flour and spices. Gradually add to butter mixture, beating until combined.

Chill dough until firm and easy to work with. Pinch off palm-sized piece and roll into a strip about the width of a pencil. Chop into half-inch pieces. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes, or until the bottoms are golden brown."

One of the alterations we like to make (other than rolling them in colored sugar which I can take or leave it makes them look more festive but makes it a little crunchier.) is to make wreaths out of them I really enjoy these.

Venison five ways

You might remember that I mentioned in one of my thanksgiving posts that I was thankful for generous friends who parted with some of there venison for us to try, and in one I mentioned how grateful I am for free curriculum.

Well part of what we wanted the venison for was because these last two weeks before thanksgiving we have devoted out school time to learning about the Native Americans who lived in the north east when the first settlers came to this continent. We have been doing a lot of reading, and beading, and finger weaving, but I also wanted to give the kids a taste of what the people we were studying would have eaten.

So we made a salad, and corn bread and wild rice and venison with onions and mushrooms
that were listed as being appropriate to the north eastern region.

But we still had a good bit of venison left over so here are four other ways we prepared it.

 

 Venison tacos from Mississippi Kitchen

Creamy Venison from SORTED

Venison pot roast from A Less Processed Life

Venison Stew

You can use beef for just about all of these recipes if you don't have any venison.

Gluten Free Apple Cider Doughnuts

Apple Cider Doughnuts

 

I converted the above recipe to Gluten free and I am thrilled with how they turned out.

granulated sugar for preparing pans
1 1/2 cups Gluten free all-purpose baking flour
1/2 cup soy flour (can just use GF all purpose but the soy helps keep them from going stale as quickly)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 large egg, beaten
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup apple butter
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
1/3 cup apple cider
1/3 cup plain nonfat yogurt
3 Tablespoons vegetable or canola oil

Preheat oven to 400°F.
Grease pan and sprinkle with sugar.
Combine together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon; set aside. In another bowl, whisk together egg, brown sugar, apple butter, maple syrup, cider, yogurt and oil. Add dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. spoon batter into cavities of the pan, don’t fill them to the top or your doughnuts will puff up and lose there holes still yummy but not quite the same. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until the tops spring back when touched lightly. turn out doughnuts to cool, Clean the pan, re-coat it with oil and sugar. Repeat with remaining batter. I got one and a half dozen from my pans.

you can glaze or frost or sprinkle with sugar or whatever you want. Enjoy!

Caramel Apples

I love caramel. Also caramel apples.

I am honestly not totally sure where I came across this recipe the first time but it is easy to make and easy to remember.

1/2 Microwave caramel:

1/2 a stick of butter (1/4 cup)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk.

Microwave for 6-8 min stirring every 2.

To make caramel apples I find it easier to start with cold apples so put the sticks in them and put them in the fridge the night before. If you don't have them cold it will still work but I think it helps the caramel set if they start cold. Also I like to work with smaller apples I find the big ones to be a bit overwhelming to try to sit down and eat and I prefer to have my caramel apples be on a more manageable scale.

One of the tricks for getting good coverage is to not only dip the apple but to spin it in the caramel and if you like the caramel up to the stick like my kids do have a spoon in hand to drizzle the caramel higher up the apple. Be sure to let the excess caramel drip off before putting it on the wax paper. I usually scrap the bottom free of caramel you will get enough drip from the sides to make your foot as the caramel sets.

 Any left over caramel goes on apple slices for a "right now" snack.

Gluten Free Crock Pot Apple Cobbler

I was looking for a quick and easy apple breakfast recipe and stumbled on this one Easy Breakfast Apple Cobbler from Food.com

So I decided to give it a shot. Only 5 ingredients, naturally gluten free, and I just set it and forget it and wake up to delicious hot apple breakfast. Sounds almost too good to be true.

I did modify mine slightly. 
I used white sugar rather than honey as I was apparently out, and added a handful of golden raisins.

Just be sure if you want it gluten free to use a gluten free granola. 

I would say to go with the honey over the sugar it caramelized and then started to burn a little. This might be a side effect of my crock pot which I think needs to be replaced and the low might not be cooking on low. I suspect this because the apples were a little bit more mush than a cobbler usually leaves them but that may be because I picked softer apples and you will want to be sure to use good sweet baking apples like Braeburn.

Baked Apple Chips

Baked Apple Chips

This was something new to me this year. I love to eat apple chips have never thought about making them before but when I found this recipe I figured I would give it a shot. I used four large apples rather than the 2 small recommended so I doubled the syrup as well. And used more lime than lemon in the syrup mix.

I was also not able to cut them as thinly as I should. You really want them paper thin. So they look a lot longer to crisp than the 1 hour spesified in the recipe. 

I was pretty sure using huge apples and doubling the recipe would give us enough to last us a while. I was wrong. They are already gone. 
 

Gluten Free Jewish Apple Cake

7 apples
2 cups plus 5 Tablespoons sugar 

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

2 3/4 cups gluten free all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 Tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup orange juice

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

4 eggs


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. grease a bundt pan. Peel, core and thinly slice the apples. Coat the apples with 5 Tbs of sugar and the cinnamon then set aside. Mix together gluten free flour, salt and baking powder in the large bowl. In a separate bowl- mix together orange juice, oil, sugar and vanilla then combine with the dry.     Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Pour 1/3 of batter into bundt pan. top with 1/3 of the apple mixture. Repeat with remaining batter and apples to get 3 layers. Bake for approximately 60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
  

Easy Caramel Glaze:
1/2 cup sweetened condenced milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
Microwave for about 4 min stirring every two.

Baked Apples

This was really simple I had several larger baking apples that I needed to use up so I cored two filled them with a brown sugar and cinnamon mixture.

Because they were larger I added a but of apple juice to the bottom of the pan and ended up tenting the pan with foil to help steam the apples to speed up the cooking. I put them in a pan in the oven at 300 for about an hour.

 Best served with cream whipped or otherwise. I did not get a picture but I put mine in a bowl with whole milk. The apple soaked up the milk and the milk took the cinnamon and apple juice and it was very very tasty. A very simple apple treat.

Gluten Free Fried Apple Pancakes

Carla Hall's Fried Apple Pancakes
 This recipe was another I found when looking for simple and yummy apple recipes. I like it because its easy to size up or down to suit your needs unlike a cake or pie. They make a great side dish, I served them with Swedish meatballs, or you can eat them on their own for breakfast or whenever. The original recipe, linked above, has an apple cider syrup to go with it but we prefered them with maple syrup or warm apple sauce.

1 Cup Gluten Free Bisquick Baking Mix
1 egg
1 cup of milk
1 tbs vegetable oil or melted butter
1 Teaspoon Pumpkin Pie Spice

3 Medium Apples
pealed, cored, and sliced into 1/4 in rings

Prepare the pancake batter with the baking mix, egg, milk, oil, and spices. Heat your griddle to a medium heat. Dip the apple rings into the batter and then place on the well greased griddle. Let cook through. You want the pancake batter not to burn while the apple softens so if you need to reduce the heat do so.

Apple Butter

Apple Butter is a big deal in our house. Next to the strawberry jam its our go to spread and its so easy to make. I usually make mine with store bought apple sauce not homemade because the homemade is good and I want to eat on its own and I have not noticed a marked difference when made with all natural no sugar added store bought apple sauce and you can pick up some big can of it pretty inexpensively.

the below measurements are pretty rough its more of what ever suits your taste we like ours dark and spicy.

7-8 cups apple sauce
3 tbs cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves

Put everything into your crock pot and let it cook on low without the lid on you will want to stir every few hours or so and you can let it go over night. The basic goal here is to cook off enough liquid to get the apple sauce downs to a thick smooth spreadable texture. it will at least reduce by half after that is up to you how thick you want it.

Apple Sauce

I did mine in the crock pot for the first time this year. You can do it just in a pot over the stove but I was a little busy so I figured I would try the slower but less attention intensive way of cooking it.

The great thing about making your own apple sauce is that you can control what goes in it. Last year I made a few flavored varieties this year I stuck with plain apple sauce but I will included the recipes for the other flavors at the end.

I almost hesitate to call this a recipe.

apples
apple juice or cider

First you want to peel and core your apples.
Pour about a half an inch of your juice or cider into the bottom on the crock pot or a deep heavy bottomed pot on the stove.
Dump in your apples.

If in a crock pot heat on high for at least 4 hours with the lid on stirring it around every hour or so. If on the stove heat on medium high string every 15 min or so until the apples start to break down keep cooking and stirring.

Once you have a smooth thick sauce you can either cool it off and store it in the fridge/freezer or you can can it to get it shelf stable. If you are new to canning I suggest reading up on the details of it as we are talking about preserving food you want to be sure you are doing it correctly.

For some other flavors you can substitute orange juice in the beginning, mix in dried fruit, cinnamon, or other spices, you can add pureed berries near the end for strawberry, raspberry or black berry flavors. Last year I made an orange spice version, and an orange and cranberry, that we had for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.

Apple Week!

Its Apple week here at Homegrown Strawberries. Which means that rather than the usual 3 (If I am on top of things) you will be getting at least 9 if not more posts most featuring apples! Yay apples!

You will get recipes for the following:

Apple Sauce

Apple Butter

Gluten Free Fried Apple Pancakes

Gluten Free Jewish Apple Cake

Baked Apple Chips

Gluten Free Apple Cinnamon Pop Tarts


Caramel Apples 

Gluten Free Apple Cider Doughnuts

Gluten Free Apple Fritters


Gluten Free Crock Pot Apple Cobbler