Much as I love caramel apples, given a choice I’ll go for the candy apple every time. That’s because no one makes them much anymore. There’s a perception that they’re more difficult to make than caramel apples, but it ain’t so. If you can heat syrup in a pan and take its temperature, you can make a candy apple. Here, let me show you how easy it is.
READ ONMusic lovers are all feeling a little blue today having lost Lou Reed yesterday. None are feeling bluer than Mrs. Pastry who’s been a Lou Reed fan since long before we ever met. His records were the soundtrack of her years in Manhattan, which she regards as some of the best of her life. She hadn’t met me yet, so that only stands to reason. Do yourself a favor and listen to a little Lou today. This is my favorite track of his, off of Rock n’ Roll Animal. Not only is it a trademark tune, it’s a vivid illustration of what great musicians Lou always had playing with him. Notice how they all have fun strutting their stuff, jamming for the first few minutes, then they all lock in together just as Lou takes the stage. That’s rock n’ roll, baby!
READ ONReader Mark writes:
i am a vegetarian, i bought a nutri grain bars, after i had one i looked at the ingredients and found that is contains glycerin. i have heard that glycerin comes from the fat of pigs. is that true, or not
Hey Mark! Good question. It’s gelatin that comes from pigs and bovines (skins mostly). Glycerine is completely vegetarian. It comes from a couple of sources. It is the main by-product of biofuel (ethanol) production, which means that assuming ethanol continues to be mandated in auto fuel blends we’ll be seeing a lot more of it. But biofuel glycerine isn’t the type we typically eat, since in its raw state it contains a fair amount of water plus a few residual whatsits.
READ ONWhat discussion of apple agriculture in nineteenth century America would be complete without at least a couple of paragraphs devoted to Johnny Appleseed? Oh yes, he was a real person, proper name Jonathan Chapman, born in 1774 in Leominster, Massachusettes, and one of the most eccentric characters ever to set a bare foot on the American frontier. Part freelance nurseryman, part missionary, part real estate speculator, he was ALL kook, known to wear a tin pot on his head, put out camp fires to keep from burning mosquitoes and punish his feet for treading on worms (for instance, by throwing his shoes away). For all that he was also a canny businessman who traveled Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and parts beyond planting makeshift nurseries for Westward-heading settlers.
READ ONLots of responses to the Fruit with a Checkered Past post below. Many asking: are you pulling our legs, Joe? Did frontier children really drink? Oh yes they did, and for one simple reason: because alcoholic beverages were frequently safer than water.
The reason should be fairly clear: microbes can’t survive in an environment that’s 10-15% alcohol. This is a reality that peoples all over the Eurasian continent and the Mediterranean discovered millennia ago, even though they had no concept of microbes: people who drank beer, wine and other alcoholic drinks (like kefirs) stayed healthier than those who drank ground water. Sure, in time
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Speaking of chopping down apple trees, meet Carrie A. Nation. Nation was the most well-known of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s, er…activists. A real-life hatchet man is what she was. And if you think that’s an uncharitable thing to call a woman, what would you call a 6-foot, 180-pound, ax-wielding bull, all dressed in black? Even the Boston Strong Boy, prize fighter John L. Sullivan is said to have dashed for the exits when Nation burst through the doors of his Manhattan bar round about 1905. They say he screamed like a girl all the while…wouldn’t you?
But that was Nation’s style. Never shy when it came to speaking her mind, she nevertheless believed that actions — especially those that involved hatchets, rocks, bricks, clubs and lots of smashing glass — spoke much louder than words. No question she had a point there. You might say she was a pioneer of the if-persuasion-fails-there’s-always-violence school of political activism.
READ ONYou know, it’s really unfair to characterize frontier apple orchards as being all about drinking. They weren’t. They were also about gambling. Sort of.
How so? Well, these days we Americans are fairly complacent about apples. We shop at big markets and select from the few tried-and-true varieties that we use for eating, pies, baking and whatnot. But there was a period around the turn of the last century when different apple varieties where everywhere, and America as a nation was on fire to discover the new hot “eating apple”.
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So ask readers Mari and Lisa. I live for this sort of stuff, so let’s get into it. First, let’s define a few terms. Corm syrup is something most of us are very familiar with. It’s a syrup made from corn endosperm (starch) that has been exposed to enzymes which break the long chain starch molecules down into short sugars that human tongues can taste. The result of all this molecule-breaking (hydrolysis) is a soup of roughly 15% glucose (one of the very simplest of sugars), 10% maltose (two glucose molecules bonded together) and 55% longer sugars. These longer sugars blunt the sweetness of corn syrup simply because we don’t have taste receptors for all of them. They also give it thickness. The last 20% is water.
READ ONThe poor apple. It’s had a bad rap since just about forever. Sure, nowadays its image has been plastered over to create a wholesome veneer, but that can’t fully erase centuries of bad PR. For over a millennium the apple has been synonymous with sin in the Judeo-Christian tradition. No one knows exactly why. Genesis doesn’t specify what the “forbidden fruit” actually was, in fact there are those who to this day argue that the forbidden fruit was a fig. So why the bad rap, historically speaking? Perhaps because the Latin word for apple, malus, is strikingly similar to the Latin word for “evil”, malum.
Which is not to say that ancient peoples had any particular problem with the apple. Human beings from Khazakstan (where the apple is thought to have originated) to Europe, Japan and all other points along the Silk Road have enjoyed apples for thousands of years. I daresay it was when the apple reached North America that the bad press really started.
READ ONReader Gail asks:
I have a question about altering recipes. I love buttermilk, I think it gives cakes a singular texture. So if I wanted to use buttermilk instead of regular milk in chemically-leavened layer cake batter, should I reduce the baking powder and add baking soda? Are there imbalances the buttermilk will cause? Or is it just not a good idea in general?
Interesting issues you raise here, Gail. One of the myths of baking is that recipes containing chemical leavening must be perfectly balanced from a pH standpoint. That’s not true much of the time. Sure, you don’t want heavy alkalinity in a batter that’s got a lot of fat or oil, since that gives you soap. But in general a little bit can be good since it gives you extra browning.
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