New Crop Apples

Maybe you know, maybe you don't, apples are harvested in the Fall. Yet we all eat FrEsH, crispy, sweet Washington State apples all year. If the fruit was kept in only cold storage those apples might get us through, maaaaybe, February. But in the 1930s Dr Robert Smock a researcher at Cornell University's Pomology department (yep a whole department) experimented in a barn near campus. Under the barn was a damp basement where he tried different levels of reduced oxygen, evidently apples 'breathe' and this slows their breath. This 'controlled atmosphere' method is still in use today. Fall apples beyond our current needs are loaded into containers and all the oxygen is sucked out. The containers are opened as needed and you can actually have that recommended apple a day straight outta Washington State. In the Fall (like this very minute!) we carry what are known as NEW crop apples. 

I eat apples year round but this time of year is the best with new crop in! Confession~I'm a bit of a food hoarder. Consequently my fruit bowl is loaded with apples in Fall. The extras usually end up baked or sautéd with cinnamon sugar or thrown into a simple fast coffee cake recipe I've been using for 30-ish years. If you've seen this recipe posted here in the past let this serve as a reminder :) Otherwise here is the recipe~

1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 or 3 apples, the sweeter the better
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)



Place apple in a bowl, break eggs over top, right on top of that add oil, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and nuts. Stir until well blended. Place all dry ingredients in a sifter together, sift onto apple mixture. Stir just until flour is moist. Mix will seem dry, don’t worry, you have done it right. Spread into pan, bake at 350* for about 45 minutes, test with a toothpick. The top should look dry but the cracks will not. Then top with sifted powdered sugar. Chewy, sweet, deeeeliciousness.

Do you have a recipe for new crop apple you'd like to share? LMK!


Happy Hometown Fall y'all!