Apple Pie Filling

I hope everyone had a great Halloween and Samhain holiday. This year I made my first attempt at a more detailed jack o'lantern. I am pretty pleased, but I know for next year to simplify the design quite a bit. Too many fine lines results in me having to break out the toothpicks to hold all the pieces together. Luckily I have a super crafty husband who was great at hiding the toothpicks, so they are not super obvious in holding things together. I am sure glad that we made an attempt. Posting pictures of the Halloween pumpkin always start to set some fear into my soul though, and not for the usual reasons. My mind immediately turns to... yes Christmas. I start to think about all the things that I need to start work on to make sure that the holidays are homemade and happy.

But this is about apple pie filling.... so all those panic filled thoughts of crafting are out of sight and out of mind until I stop writing up this posting. Pie filling! It is a wonderful thing. There is nothing that I find more versatile than having this in my canning arsenal. I can use pie fillings for homemade danishes, pies, turnovers, crisps, cake fillings, pancakes, and cobblers to name a few. Canning pie filling can be a pretty easy and instantly rewarding activity. For doing apples the set up is a bit more complicated. I have a station setup with the washed apples on one side, cutting board in the middle. Once I peel the apples and take out the blossom ends, they get a quick dunk in the lemon juice and water bowl at the top of the cutting board. This helps keep the apples from turning brown and is mostly cosmetic. Once I have the apples cored and sliced, they go into the lemon juice mix again for a little while as I peel the next apple. From there the slices go into the big four cup measuring cup. After I fill the measuring cup generously, I dump any accumulated lemon water back into the first bowl and transfer the slices into the final big bowl. I know that it sounds overly complicated, but it works well for me and ensures that my pie filling looks great.

When I can my pie filling, I like a consistency of store bought. I know that many people do not like the extra thick goop that is in canned pie filling, but I quite enjoy that texture. In order to make sure that you safely can a goop filled pie filling, you need to use Clear Jel. Clear Jel is a specially manufactured corn starch that is safe for canning at high temperatures. If you use flower or arrow root, it will not hold up and from what I understand will separate out and create weird chunks in the filling. I follow the recipe from The Complete Book of Home Preserving from Ball. The recipe from the book has you use a base of apple juice for the filling around the apples. I find that cider gives the best flavor rather than straight up filtered juice. This year I used a combination of a gravenstein cider I found at Trader Joe's as well as the cider we bought on our apple picking trip. The cider is cooked with sugar, spices, and the Clear Jel. A quick tip on working with the Clear Jel is that it works best when mixed with the sugar before adding in the liquid. It makes it less clumpy and easier to stir with less clumps to break up. As the base liquid starts to reach boiling, the Clear Jel will activate, and small clumps of what appear to be burned filling will dot the pan. Don't panic! This is totally normal. Keep stirring constantly, and suddenly, the entire pan will be jelled up pretty solid. Add the lemon juice and then the poached apple slices. Bring it all up to heat and then can following proper procedures.

Now there is one thing I will say about doing this kind of filling... it is super thick! This viscous texture creates all kinds of interesting canning issues. It is virtually impossible to get out all the air bubbles. Try your absolute best. It is also more difficult to get all the filling up to a hot enough temperature to can with out siphoning issues. If the filling gets too hot it will scorch and not taste as great. Make sure you provide a generous inch of head space. Any less and it will be a complete mess. Every time I have done these recipes, for both apple and cherry,  I have horrible siphoning issues. It is imperative that you have towels down when they come out of the water bath. There is typically some of the filling that runs out of each jar and all over the place. I don't seem to have the problem as much with peach, and apple is by far the worst for some reason. Once the jars have sealed and cooled, I take the rings off and scrub down the jars and rings with lots of water and elbow grease. I also make sure to not use hot water as I do not want the seals compromised. Yeah it all sounds like a pain, but it is great to be able to crack open a jar when there is short notice and whip up something that seems rather impressive to last minute guests. The only other suggestion I have for the recipe is halving the amount of nutmeg. I am not sure if it is because we grind our own or if we just do not like a super nutmeg filled pie, but I feel the Ball recipe has too much. This year I halved the amount and am much more happy with the results. Happy canning! Hopefully you can give pie filling a whirl!

Fresh Bread and Pie

I tried Reinheart's soft sandwich bread out of Artisan Bread Everyday yesterday, and I have to say that I was very pleased with the results. The dough is rather easy to make and took me only 20 minutes the night before to mix up. The recipe makes two loaves, and since there are only the two of us, I debated cutting the recipe in half. I decided on making the full recipe and trying to freeze half of it after the overnight fermentation. I will let you know the results of this experiment when I need to make sandwich bread again in the coming weeks. The dough the next day was velvety and soft feeling. It was just a great feeling dough.

I segmented into the two loaves, rounded one and placed it into the oiled zipper bag and froze it just like I have done with the lean bread from this book. The other loaf was shaped, placed into the greased tin and left to rise for two and a half hours. I slipped the risen loaf into the oven for 40 minutes, the shortest cook time, and found this beautiful golden brown bread. The crust on the top was just right. I have to say that the gold touch pans from Williams-Sonoma really do a wonderful job with bread and the crispness of the crust around the full loaf.

When I cut it open, I found this beautiful crumb with just the right amount of bubbles in the dough for lightness. It is a more dense bread than store bought to be sure, but it is also velvety and moist. The texture is soft yet firm enough that it does not collapse into a compressed mess. What did I put on this too too decedent bread? Why peanut butter and homemade jelly of course! I know, it seems so unclassy for this royal sandwich bread, but it was what I was craving. Now to just find myself a perfect bread box, so my bread can last a bit longer. Currently it is wrapped up in waxed paper in an attempt to keep it decent for the next few days. I had it for toast this morning, and while the interior is still wonderful, the crust is starting to lose a bit of its crunch.

After bread baking, I went on a quest to find more lemons as I had run out. I needed them to start the next project, apple pie filling. I processed more apples into the dehydrator and then I was off to the races getting the pie filling made. I have to recommend the v slicer or a mandolin if you are thinking of doing apple pie filling or dehydrating mass quantities of apple slices. It really does make fast work out of the slicing, and it also ensures that your slices are all the same perfect size.

Once the slices were treated against browning, they had to be blanched for a little bit to facilitate the canning process by bringing them to a hot temperature. Next the goopy filling that goes between the apple slices was made. I followed the recipe from The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, and I think this is another winner out of that book. The Clear Jel really makes it all work well. After the goop was made, in went the apple slices and a quick boil was reached. Then packing them into the jars and into the canner for processing.

I found that this recipe ran a bit short on its estimate of yield. I only got five full pints and a scant sixth when the recipe says it makes seven pints. Perhaps my half circle slices were too large to measure out the 12 cups as exactly as they did in the recipe. No matter as I am sure this will not be my only batch of apple pie filling this year. I am sure once we go apple and grape picking this fall that more will be made.

I can my pie filling into pints rather than quarts because a quart perfectly fills our mini pie pan. This pie was made last night out of the scant pint that was left over. It had just too much air space in the jar to reasonably store it, so I used it right away! Hey, no one is complaining here!

I had some requests for the apple jelly and apple butter recipes that I used for yesterday's blog posting. I will post them tomorrow in the blog. Check back to get those recipes then. Today is a really busy day as it is the first day back for me at 826 Valencia for after school tutoring. I still have some canning I am going to try to get done before I leave for that as well as getting my dance class clothing ready and the house straightened up a bit. I promise wholeheartedly to post those recipes tomorrow.