Gillian’s Snack Balls

Looking for a healthy snack your kids will actually eat?

Try this one, invented by my daughter Gillian. They look good too, don’t they? Maybe even good enough to greet hungry guests if you’re having a Break-the-fast for Yom Kippur and someone wants a quick nibble before the real dinner.

Gillian invented these because she wants to send healthy snacks to school, but also send something her daughter Lila will like. She remembers the days when she was a kid and I was the one sending the lunch and snack. I also wanted to send something healthy, not a Snickers bar or M&Ms. But I also didn’t want to be the carrot-and-raisin Mom who never sent a chip and whose kids always traded those carrots-and-raisins for a sample of whatever the other children happen to bring that day (sometimes Snickers bar or M&Ms).

These snack balls are sweet, but there’s only one tablespoon of honey in 4 dozen balls. The rest is all natural fruit sweetener from the figs, prunes and dates.

Grownups like these too. Take my word for that.

Gillian’s Snack Balls

8-10 large dried figs, coarsely chopped

1 cup pitted prunes, halved

3/4 cup dried cranberries

6 large Medjool dates, coarsely chopped

1 cup quick cooking oats

1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1-1/2 to 2 teaspoons grated fresh orange peel

1 tablespoon honey

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Place the figs, prunes, cranberries, dates, oats, applesauce, orange peel and honey in a food processor and process for about one minute or until the ingredients are well combined and form a soft pasty ball. Use a spoon to take enough paste to form one-inch balls. Roll the balls in coconut. Makes about 4 dozen

Plum Pie

I am the human equivalent of a squirrel. Every late-summer-early-autumn I gather up ingredients to make into food that I can store for the cold, hard winter that’s coming.

Surely, those of you who have been reading this blog know I’ve been knee deep - no, actually shoulder deep or thank-goodness-I-have-an-old-fridge-in-the-basement deep in prune plums. I saw them early in the season and couldn’t stop myself from buying pounds and pounds of them.

Well, I’ve poached some, tucked some under a crispy cover, baked some into torte and made a cake or two. And finally, I’m up to pie. Because my brother Jeff loves pie and cousin Neil likes plum desserts and when the pies are done the plum bin will finally be empty. And I will have a freezer full of desserts to keep us as happy as squirrels all winter long, but for the one pie I will serve at my annual Yom Kippur Break-the-fast next week.

Plum Pie

Dough for half crust pie

2-1/2 pounds Italian prune plums

2/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons minute tapioca

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Streusel:

3/4 all-purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

6 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Roll the dough to fit a 9-inch pie pan. Crimp the outside to form a decorative edge. Wash and halve the plums and remove the pits. Cut the plums into slices and place in a large bowl. Add the sugar, tapioca, lemon juice and cinnamon and mix well. Place the fruit mixture inside the crust. Make the streusel: mix the flour and sugar. Add the butter and mix with your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs (or pulse in a food processor). Sprinkle the mixture over the fruit. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the crust is crispy and golden brown. Makes one pie

Apple-Apricot Sauce with Honey

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But when life gives you apples, well then, make applesauce.

My daughter Gillian and her husband Jesse and two kids, Lila and Remy, went apple picking and brought us more apples (and pears) that we could possibly eat.

SO, to go with our festive Rosh Hashanah dinner tonight, I made some applesauce. Or, should I say, apple-pear-apricot sauce. I remember apple-apricot sauce from when I was a youngster. Beech Nut baby food. The stuff was so good I (and my brother Jeff) ate it well into teenagedom and maybe even beyond. But, like so many food products it changed over the years and we both noticed and stopped eating it. Besides, those little jars were way too small for a grown up.

So I make my own.

I really hate to give a recipe for applesauce. It’s really just a matter of peeling, coring and cutting apples and cooking them over low heat in a covered pan. Add some pears if you wish. And dried fruit such as apricots. Depending on the kind of apples, you may or may not need sugar (or some other sweetener) or water (or juice). You could add cinnamon or some other seasoning or not. Cook until soft, mash or puree and you’re done.

Here’s how I made the one in the photo:

Apple-Apricot Sauce with Honey

• 3 pounds apples

• 2 pears

• 1 packed cup dried apricot halves

• 1/2 cup water

• 1/4 cup honey

• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Peel, core and slice the apples and pears. Place them in a pot with the apricots and water. Cover the pan. Turn the heat to low. Cook for about 25 minutes or until the fruit is soft. Add honey and cinnamon. Mash or puree (I used a hand blender).

Makes about 8-10 servings

Apple Cake

Sometimes simple is best. This is the time of year I buy a load of apples and bake pies and fancy cakes and gorgeous French apple tarts.

But, with all the cooking and baking I’m doing now, I also try to make a few really easy desserts that are light and fresh tasting so we can eat them even after a heavy holiday meal.

This one is a classic. Good plain, with a hot cup of coffee or tea. Or with ice cream of course.

I think I could write a whole book about different kinds of apple cake.

Apple Cake

3-4 medium tart apples, peeled, cored and coarsely chopped

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1-1/4 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

1/4 cup apple, orange, peach or mango juice

1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 10-inch springform pan (or a 9”x13” cake pan). Combine the apples, 1/4 cup sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl and set aside. Place the flour, baking powder, salt, 1-1/4 cups sugar and vegetable oil in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat at medium speed for 2-3 minutes or until thoroughly blended. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Stir in the juice, lemon peel and vanilla extract. Spoon half the batter into the prepared pan. Spoon some of the apple mixture on top. Repeat the layers. Bake for about 65-75 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Makes one cake

Baked Apples with Raisins, Honey, Orange and Pistachios

Baked Apples with Raisins, Honey, Orange and Pistachioos

It’s apples and honey time. First, because those two ingredients are delicious symbols of Rosh Hashanah, which starts at sundown next Sunday.

But also because new crop apples are just beginning their season, and after months and months of mealy, dry, tasteless supermarket apples, we can finally find some that taste fresh, juicy and wonderful. Like maybe the kind that tempted Eve. 

And also because September is National Honey Month. Honey, too, is in a high season right now, especially in the Northeast.

So I was delighted to read an article in The Huffington Post that said honey has health benefits.

That means I am going to be terrifically healthy. I have several jars of honey in my pantry. That I keep replenishing because, well, I use a lot of honey.

Honey is so, so good, right from my fingers, as I scoop the remnants that remain on the outside as I close up the jar.

It also tastes really good poured onto ice cream, cereal and pancakes.

And it’s an incredibly useful ingredient in recipes for dessert, like honey cake and also in savory foods — like mixing it with apple juice to baste a turkey.

Honey as healthy?

Well, that’s just an added bonus.

When I read the article and it mentioned using honey to help with night time coughs I thought about where I had heard that before.

Oh yeah. My Mom. Ages ago, when I was a little girl and had a cold and she mixed honey into tea.

Some things never change, nor should they.

Here’s an old recipe that I can now say is healthy because it has honey. Also, fresh, new crop apples.

It’s also a wonderful treat for Rosh Hashanah or any other holiday or any day in the week.

BAKED APPLES WITH RAISINS, HONEY, ORANGE AND PISTACHIOS

• 4 large baking apples

• 6 tablespoons golden raisins

• 1/4 cup chopped pistachios

• 2 teaspoons grated fresh orange peel

• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 6 tablespoons honey

• 1/2 cup orange juice

• 1/2 cup water

• 1 tablespoon butter, cut into 4 pieces (or use coconut oil)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Wash the apples and remove the cores, leaving about one-half inch at the bottom. Peel the apples about halfway down from the top. Place the apples in a baking dish. Mix the raisins, pistachios, orange peel, ginger, cinnamon, 3 tablespoons honey and 3 tablespoons orange juice in a small bowl. Spoon equal amounts of this mixture into the hollowed apple cores. Combine the remaining honey, juice and water and pour over the apples. Dot the tops with butter. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the apples are tender, basting occasionally with the pan juices.

Makes 4 servings

Strawberry Balsamic Ice Cream

Strawberry Balsamic Ice Cream

It’s not too late to make ice cream is it?

Just kidding. Ice cream is always in season.

I made this one the other day after reading an article about Balsamic vinegar. Mostly it says what I have always believed: don’t use Balsamic vinegar for everything.

When Balsamic vinegar was a hot, new trendy product, a whole lot of people were experimenting with it for almost every conceivable recipe. Mostly salads. But, like so many other ingredients, it has been overused.

Commercial Balsamic vinegars are fine for some — not all — salads and for marinades.

Aged, premium Balsamic vinegars are best as a condiment. Add a few drops to complement a sharp cheese (blue types, Parmesan, feta, etc.), bold greens (such as arugula), certain fresh fruit (like peaches and strawberries) or onto sizzling grilled steak (rather than, say, ketchup. Are you reading this Ed?)

And it is absolutely wonderful switched with traditional vanilla extract, for strawberry ice cream.

Strawberry Balsamic Ice Cream

• 3 cups half and half, light cream or whipping cream

• 2 cups finely diced strawberries

• 2/3 cup sugar

• 2 tablespoons premium Balsamic vinegar

• 3 large egg yolks

• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Heat 2 cups of the cream over medium heat until bubbles appear around the edges of the pan. Place the strawberries in a bowl and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of the sugar and the Balsamic vinegar. Mix and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the remaining sugar, the egg yolks and salt at medium speed for 3-5 minutes or until light and thick. Gradually add the heated cream and mix the ingredients. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 5-6 minutes or until thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour in the remaining cream and blend it in thoroughly. Pour into a container and refrigerate until cold. Add the strawberries plus any juices that have accumulated. Freeze in an ice cream freezer according to manufacturer’s directions.

Makes about one quart

Apple Strudel

ate wasting food, so I really related to this article, which gave me yet another reason to think twice before discarding leftovers. It mentioned that the average American household throws out about 470 pounds of food a year, adding unnecessarily to landfills.

I hadn’t actually considered this reason before. For me it was always guilt about hunger around the world. I was brought up in the post-World War II generation of kids who heard this phrase: “think of the poor starving children in Europe” whenever we didn’t want to eat something or other.

Which is not to say I never trash food or that I think it is good to make children eat everything on their plates.

No, I just mean I like to make as creative and delicious uses for leftovers as I can. And to not throw stuff out if I can use it.

For instance. I have been busily making apple dishes for the Jewish holidays. And I had some extra phyllo dough — pieces that had torn off and couldn’t be used for the apple strudels that are now tucked away in my freezer.

So, I spooned some of the apple filling into a small baking dish and covered it with layers of the small, not-so-pretty leftover snippets of dough, brushed them with melted butter and voila! a terrific dessert for two.

Here’s my recipe for Apple Strudel. If you have ingredients leftover, treat yourself to a “leftovers” version.

Apple Strudel

• 4 pie apples (Rhode Island Greenings, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, etc.)

• 3/4 cup golden raisins

• 1-1/2 teaspoons grated fresh lemon peel

• 8 phyllo dough sheets

• 10 tablespoons butter, melted (approximate)

• 1/3 cup plain dry breadcrumbs

• 1/2 cup ground almonds, optional

• 6-8 tablespoons sugar

• 1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. Peel, core and slice the apples into a bowl. Add the raisins and lemon peel, mix and set aside. Using one sheet of phyllo dough at a time, brush the sheet with some of the melted butter and sprinkle lightly with bread crumbs. Top with a second sheet of dough and continue until there are two separate buttered/crumbed phyllo sheets that are 4 sheets thick. If using the almonds, sprinkle them in a strip along the long side of the buttered/crumbed sheets, leaving a margin of about 1-1/2-inches on both short ends. Spoon the apple mixture on top of the almonds. Sprinkle each mixture with equal amounts of sugar and cinnamon. Roll each strudel, with the last roll, seam side down, onto the cookie sheet. Press the short ends to seal them. Brush each rolled strudel with remaining melted butter. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 2 strudels, each serving 6

Plum Cake

Apples and Honey may be the most celebrated of Rosh Hashanah foods, but plums are also high on the list. Anyone who grew up in a Jewish household is surely familiar with Plum Torte, a standard item for the High Holidays. In fact, I think that every year, or nearly every year, the New York Times publishes a recipe for it. 

So, here’s my recipe. And by the way, my niece Rachel once made this cake using pears because plums were not in season anymore. 

But this year, in addition to my usual plum torte, I am making Plum Cake. There is an abundance of gorgeous, plump, prune plums (a/k/a President plums) in the market and I couldn’t resist, so I bought several pounds to bake with.

I once wrote about how much I loved my Aunt Beck’s apple cake, a favorite end-of-summer and Jewish holiday treat. So I changed a few ingredients and proportions here and there and made it into plum cake. It not only tastes as good as the apple version, the colors are festive and gorgeous. I think Aunt Beck would like it.

Plum Cake

Crust:

1 large egg

1/3 cup sugar

6 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons orange juice (or apple, apricot, mango)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 teaspoons grated fresh orange or lemon peel

Filling:

 2 pounds Italian prune plums (or President plums)

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut into tiny pieces

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. To make the crust, beat the egg, sugar, vegetable oil and orange juice together in a mixer set at medium speed for 1-2 minutes or until well mixed. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and citrus peel and mix until a smooth, soft, uniform dough has formed, about 2-3 minutes. Cut the dough into two pieces, one piece twice as large as the other. Roll each piece on a lightly floured surface. Fit the larger piece into the bottom and up the sides of an 8”x8” or 9”x9” pan Wash the plums, cut in half and remove the pit. Slice the plums. Place them in a bowl. Add the sugar, cinnamon and flour and place the mixture inside the dough. Dot the surface with butter. Roll the smaller piece of dough and place it on top. Press the edges to seal them. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until well browned. Makes 8-12 servings

Tamar Warga’s Carrot Apple Raisin Salad

If you’ve ever had to deal with children who have food allergies, you know how upsetting it can be when your child reacts to an allergen. Rashes, hives, nausea.

But sometimes that’s only part of it. A small part of it.

It’s terrifying when they can’t breathe. When their tongue swells up. When they’re choking.

My daughter Gillian’s allergies are like that. She’s allergic to fish and certain nuts (walnuts and pecans). There have been too many visits to hospital emergency rooms. Too many epi-pens and doses of benadryl.

It’s one thing to avoid allergens, quite another to send your child out in the world where some people don’t actually “believe in” allergies or simply aren’t knowledgeable enough to understand.

Like the time I sent Gillian on a playdate, gave the mom complete instructions and was horrified to find her scooping some maple-walnut ice cream into a bowl for Gillian just as I arrived at their house. The mom told me “the nuts were so tiny” that she didn’t think they would be a problem.

Or like the time a friend’s husband told me to send Gillian to his house and he would “teach” her not to be allergic to fish.

I have lots of horror stories, but won’t get into them just now. 

Suffice it to say, I empathize with all parents who are faced with this problem.

I have recently come to know Tamar Warga, whose twin boys are severely allergic. She has a blog dedicated to families with food allergies, complete with information, helpful hints and tips.

And also kosher recipes.

She compiled a collection of Passover recipes (A Taste of Freedom) and recently compiled a collection of kosher, allergy-aware recipes for the Jewish holidays: A Taste of Sweetness.

I prepared one of the recipes for my family recently and it went over quite well. A simple, gently sweet carrot dish perfect for Rosh Hashanah.

Tamar Warga’s Carrot Apple Raisin Salad

8 carrots, grated

4 granny smith apples, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 cup golden raisins

2 tablespoons lemon juice

4 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

4 tablespoons olive oil

Place the carrots, apples, raisins and celery in a bowl. In another bowl, combine the lemon juice, honey, mustard and olive oil and blend the ingredients thoroughly. Pour over the carrot mixture and toss. Makes 8 servings