This season, Chris and I enjoyed our small apples and even got more than we bargained for. You see, bigger apples make them more versatile because you can peel them, core them and use them for many things, such as apple pie. But we have small apples. They are about the size of a ping pong ball, so peeling them for recipes just doesn't work (at least not in my books). So, we found two main recipes to use them for: apple juice and caramel and chocolate covered apples.
I have to tell you more about each of these as they were amazing! First, the apple juice. Since you don't have to peel them, just core them, this became our #1 way to use the apples. I would core each of them - making sure that the apple didn't contain worms - and put them in filtered water, boiled them and added a touch of sugar. Perfect! Juice for the week! The flavor was outstanding! I could NEVER have ordinary, sugar water with apple flavoring and enjoy it again. The flavor of this "real" apple juice was as if you were biting into an apple. Tangy and sweet. Perfect. My parents even got to get in on all the apple juice making fun! Ha! (Hey, they volunteered!)
The other way we used the apples was a creation of Chef Chris. He made these perfectly wonderful apples with either a chocolate/white chocolate coating or a caramel glaze that was beautiful to look at and delicious to eat.
Chris made these for my parents when they came, his work and a church group we were going to. On the first batch, he didn't know to add milk to the caramel as they hardened a bit too much and they were hard as a rock as you tried to sink you teeth into them. Ha! My mom had a blast trying to work her way through it. But the next batches came out nice and silky.
I would say one of the downers of having so many apples was picking the ones up that fell on the ground.
We'd have to sweep almost every day to ensure we wouldn't have apple juice on our sidewalk everyone stepping on them. BUT we couldn't pick them up every day because our trash cans would get too heavy for the trash collectors. One day, we even found little boys from our neighborhood lining up the apples and smooshing them with their little feet on our sidewalk. I became the neighborhood witch by having to stop that - yuck! What a mess! And when it would be windy at night, we'd hear thumping and rolling sounds on our roof as the apples fell. Talk about keeping us awake at night.
Alas, we enjoyed our apples and the goodness it brought!
Oh, and yes, the title of this entry means "little apples" in Spanish.
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