Kosher Cuisine with Marcy Goldman

Apples for the New Year’s, Part 2 of the Rosh Hashanah Bake Fest

I promised you a Part 2, a sequel as it were, to the honey recipes of in my Kosher Cuisine’s September column. Rosh Hashanah (and Yom Kippur) are finally upon us and you can take out the apple recipes in earnest. Whatever you serve for Rosh Hashanah will also do nicely at the before, as well as after the fast. For desserts after the fast, however, you can serve dairy based apple desserts (since most people serve a dairy fast).

Each year, there seems to be more and more varieties of apples to choose from. I habitually dismiss many of them as baking apples but having tested these recipes with Pink Lady and Royal Gala apples, I realized, there are tons of apples, which work well in baking. So don’t get in a McIntosh/Granny Smith grove! The sky, or at least, the top of the apple tree, is the limit. For the best visual of apples, now and then, www.tenspeedpress.com has two apple posters that are pure art. Or check out this beautiful apple portrait from a friend, artist Heather Horton who created this beautiful fall apple or Rosh Hashanah apple painting: http://www.heatherhorton.com

Happy New Year, and happy holiday baking,

Marcy Goldman

Recipes:

Honey Apple Turnovers
Use prepared puff pastry or pie dough to make these old-fashioned turnovers. A whole apple sits in the middle of the pastry.

Blitz Apple Cake
A little shortcake to a great snacking apple cake for the New Year. Blitz cakes are old school Jewish baking but their speed, (blitz means lightening) and their great taste makes them welcome in the new millennium, no problem.

Apple Cranberry Babka
A rich babka dough crowned with the orchard’s queen of the moment: fresh apples and brightened up with touches of pretty red cranberries.

The Miller’s Cortland Apple Pie
My Aunt Helen Miller, my dad’s sister, was a master at this dough and her apple pie but the truth is, her recipe is so good it makes anyone look good. The dough is subtle and rolls out easy as..well, pie. My aunt made one of these pies pretty well every week, for my Uncle Bern, who adored her and her pies. Married for over 68 years, they were as On Golden Pond a couple as one could hope to meet. If you are tempted to put Granny Smith in this pie, it will not be the same. I make a double recipe of the original which gives me one double pie shell and one single. My aunt often baked her pie in a Pyrex pie pan. What's nice about Cortland apples, for pie, is that they get soft, but not mushy and do not brown prematurely, which is rather polite of them.