Stressed out apples make great treats

In an attempt to use every bottle we have in the storage room and then some, we tried yet another version of Red-Hot Apples. While we do enjoy the rings, our apples this year were not uniform, actually none of our fruit was uniform. I have a hunch our road construction digging stressed the trees out as much as it stressed me out. With apples that were pretty wonky, this idea of wedges sounded great. Also, no cloves. We've enjoyed the rings with cloves but also maybe less bite would be good as well. I was right - these are wonderful! I bought a few bags of red hots after Christmas a year or two ago in Wisconsin, the whole family thought I was crazy, but you have to plan for these things. The syrup was easy - so easy I forgot it was bubbling away on the stove! Those red hots melted in no time flat. This was the first recipes I've tried where the liquid did not siphon out of the apples. I'm starting to think it has to do with the saturation of the apples, either way - they turned out beautifully and tasted great! The kids and I thought they had some bite from the candy - but plenty of color from the candy and they were a great treat.

Cinnamon Red Hot Apple Wedges
4 cups water
1 1/2 cup red-hot candies
2/3 cup sugar
6 medium tart apples, peeled and quartered

Directions
In a large saucepan, bring the water, candies and sugar to a boil over medium heat; boil and stir until candies and sugar are dissolved.
Reduce heat; carefully add apples. Cook in sugar mixture for 10 minutes on low. Turn off the heat for 10 minutes to let the apples suck up the syrup then just heat them back up to a simmer. Turn off the heat and with a slotted spoon, transfer apples into pint size jars then fill with the sweet liquid. Fill to ½” headspace. Remove air bubbles, wipe rim, add lid/rings. Process in water bath canner 15 minutes.

Pack your baking patience

Sometimes you see a new recipe and add it to your "sometimes" list and it falls down the list and you eventually get around to it. Other times you see that recipe and it gets made that day. This was a "that day" recipe. I saw that it needed a few days in the fridge so that was an easy decision to get it mixed up and in the fridge. I almost forgot about it in the fridge on Sunday but got it rolling and rising. I decided to add to finely chopped apples to the cinnamon sugar mix. Focaccia seems really daunting but it's not - at all. It's really just a lot of sitting and waiting, every once in a while you fold or pull in some way. So, pack your patience, it's going to be a lot of leaving it alone so the yeast can do its magic. This tasted like fall magic, delicious bubbly cinnamony appley bread. I know with sourdough there's a bunch of timed folds and pulls... but here it'll forgive you if you do it wrong, I'm sure it will... right? I mean how would you know if it messes up? Give it a try, so worth it... and added bonus - your house will smell amazing.

Cinnamon-Sugar Focaccia
Ingredients
For the dough:
4 cups (512 g) bread or all-purpose flour
2 to 3 teaspoons (10 to 15 grams) kosher salt
2 teaspoons (8 g) instant yeast, see notes above if using active dry
2 cups (455 g) cold or room temperature water
olive oil
Softened butter, for the pan
For the cinnamon-sugar mixture:
½ cup (113 grams) butter, salted or unsalted butter, divided
½ cup (100 grams) brown sugar, divided
4 teaspoons cinnamon, divided
flaky sea salt, such as Maldon
For the glaze:
1 cup (113 grams) confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons (28 grams) milk or heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions
Make the dough: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and instant yeast. Add the water. Using a rubber spatula, mix until the liquid is absorbed and the ingredients form a sticky dough ball. Cover the bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Stretch and fold the dough: Fill a small bowl with water. Using a wet hand, stretch and fold the dough by grabbing an edge and pulling it up and towards the center. Repeat this stretching and folding process, 8 to 10 times, moving your hand around the edge of the dough with every set of stretches and folds. As you stretch and fold, you should feel the dough transform from being sticky and shaggy to smooth and cohesive. Find video guidance in the post above as well as here.
Let it rise: Rub the surface of the dough lightly with olive oil. Cover the bowl with a lid or plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator immediately for at least 12 hours or for as long as three days.
Prepare the pan: Grease a 9×13-inch pan with softened butter. Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into the pan.
Deflate the dough: Using a flexible bench scraper or a lightly oiled hand, deflate the dough by releasing it from the sides of the bowl and pulling it toward the center. Rotate the bowl in quarter turns as you deflate, turning the mass into a rough ball. Turn the dough out into the olive oil in the prepared pan. Turn the dough several times in the oil to ensure it is completely coated. Let the dough rest for 1.5 hours. Cover the pan. (I use a cutting board or sheet pan.)
Prepare the filling: In a small skillet, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter. Whisk in 4 tablespoons of the brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of the cinnamon, and a pinch of flaky sea salt. Remove from the heat and let cool briefly.
Stretch the dough: Using lightly oiled hands, gently dimple the dough, stretching it to fit the pan. Pour the brown sugar filling as evenly over the top of the dough as possible, and use your hands to distribute it over the surface. Reserve the skillet.
Fold the dough: Starting with a short end, fold the dough envelope style: if, for example, you are starting with the right edge, fold it to the left covering two-thirds of the dough, then fold the left edge over to the right to cover (and vice versa if starting with the left edge). Then turn the bundle of dough so that the open ends face the short ends of the pan. Video guidance here. Cover the pan and let the dough rest for another 1.5 hours. 
Preheat the oven to 425ºF.
Prepare the remaining filling: In the same small skillet, melt the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter. Whisk in the remaining 4 tablespoons of brown sugar, remaining 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, and a pinch of flaky sea salt. Remove from the heat and let cool briefly.
Dimple the dough: Uncover the pan, pour the filling over the surface of the dough, and rub with your hands to distribute it evenly. Using lightly oiled hands, gently dimple the dough, creating bubbles and craters as you do. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt.
Bake the dough: Transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 25 minutes or until the focaccia is evenly browned. Remove the pan from the oven, let the focaccia cool in the pan briefly (2 to 3 minutes), then run a spatula around the edges of the pan, and transfer the focaccia to a cooling rack to cool for 5 minutes.
Make the glaze: In a small bowl or liquid measure, whisk together the confectioners’ sugar, milk, and vanilla.
Finish the focaccia: Transfer the focaccia to a serving board. Drizzle the glaze over the top. Using a serrated knife, cut the focaccia into pieces (or more) and serve.

Trying to embrace more of God's bounty

Our Red Rome Apple Tree has good years and not so good years. Sometimes I feel like we need to embrace all the fruit but not sure how. Last year we gave cinnamon apples a try. I did some research wondering if we could can apples the same way we do pears and peaches, turns out you can, at least we did and it worked and we've survived so far - so win for us! Could I use the apple pear corer slicer to cut them? Sure... but our apples are wonky... like really wonky. So instead of using that fancy thing, I just peel them and use my slicer/corer to get slices of apples. I shove them into jars, add cinnamon and sugar, then top with boiling water. My only frustration is sometimes the liquid siphons out and I haven't figured out why. I need to do more research on that. These have sat on our shelves all winter and finally were opened when we ran out of applesauce. I poured them into a bowl and smashed them up - it was the most amazing applesauce. We all loved it! Do I miss my regular applesauce? oh my yes, but this is a great option and it uses our apples.

Take the skins and cores off your apples. Cut apples into slices and place in clean jars. Boil a kettle of water. Now add the sugar to the jars on top of your fruit. 2 tablespoons per pint makes a nice light syrup. Add more for a heavier syrup–up to about 1/4 cup per pint. Double those quantities if you’re canning in quart jars. Add a 1/4 tsp of cinnamon to each pint and 1/2 tsp to quart.
Then pour your hot water into the jar over the fruit and sugar and prepare to process the jar as you normally would. The sugar will dissolve in the water as the fruit is in the canner.
Wipe jar rims and threads. Place lids and bands on jars. Place jars on rack in deep stockpot of hot water from step 1. Cover, bring to a boil and process 25 minutes for pints, 30 minutes for quarts. Remove jars from hot water and place, not touching, on dish towel and cover. Cool several hours or overnight. Test seals before storing.

Fighting the buzzy stingy things for pears

Somehow, I felt guilty about our pears rotting away on our trees. I mean really, al the buzzy things were really enjoying them. We were feeding all of them. So many buzzy things. Oh, my goodness. Nicholas and I decided we would try to make some pear sauce. If we liked it - maybe that would be a thing! We love apple sauce, why not pear sauce. Well, first you have to go out and pick ripe pears with all the buzzy stingy things outside. Also, you have to dodge being bombed with soft mushy pears that go "splat!" when they fall on the ground. I ended up being the picker since Nicholas ran from the buzzy stingy things - for some reason he's been stung multiple times at church potlucks - so he's really uninterested in those critters lately. I had visions of scooping the soft pear and cooking it down gracefully... it was a sticky sloppy mess... some were soft, some were brown and gross, and some not ripe at all. We did cook it down a while and when all the pears were soft, we mashed it and called it done. What does it taste like? Pears. Shocked, aren't you? Nicholas was thrilled but honestly it didn't make much and I didn't think was worth the work since my help abandoned me. Want to try something new? Go for it! Get ready to be sticky, avoid the stingers, and enjoy some pear sauce.
Recipe? Um... Peel, core, and chop pears. Cook until desired texture... smash, cool, enjoy.

Goal: Burn his face off spicy!

It's been years and years since we've made salsa. I'm pretty sure it's because the last time we tried to make spicy salsa for Andy and we failed... so we had to make another batch and give it another try so we just had so much salsa sitting on our shelves. Our garden is very busy producing tomatoes this year, which hasn't happened for a few years, so salsa was on the plan for canning! This is my friend Mandie's recipe and it's a huge hit. It's fresh and tastes great. We did our best to spicy it up for Andy. Nicholas and I went to the grocery store and bought as many hot peppers as we could reasonably do. We even broke the self check out! Ok, we didn't... but it did freak out and stop working when we tried to scan the peppers. We wore gloves and used a chopper and included all the seeds for him. For us we did some jalapeños but no seeds. We were very careful not to pepper ourselves. I canned 31 jars on Labor Day, the next day? He ate an entire jar of the spicy salsa... you could say he liked it.
One tip I tried and true tip to avoid breaking jars - warm the salsa first. I've seen some recipes that want you to cook it down - I'm not saying that, just to warm it up. I do the same thing with canning tomatoes warm up the tomatoes or salsa before putting into the cool jars - this helps avoid the shock of the cold tomato mix into the hot water and fewer broken jars and having to start over on your canner full of clean water... which is a pain! Also don't over tighten your lids... I had help a few weeks ago with pears and had some weird issues and realized my helper was over tightening things so I had a broken jar and a buckled lid. Appreciate the help - but the right help. Enjoy this salsa recipe - it's great.

Mandie’s Salsa
Makes 10-12 pints
What you need!
12 cups heaping tomatoes chopped
2 cups green peppers chopped
3 large onions chopped
jalapeños - 1/3 c. (mild) - 1/2 c. (medium) - 1- cup (hot)
6 cloves garlic minced
1/2 bunch cilantro chopped
Mix above ingredients in a large bowl
Mix together:
12 oz. tomato paste
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons salt
1 cup vinegar
Add tomato sauce ingredients to salsa. Poor into sterilized bottles and process in boiling water bath for 20 minutes.