Apples!

Happy Fall everyone!  I am ready for some real fall weather, please.  Hopefully it is coming soon, and I will be able to drink my pumpkin spiced lattes hot instead of iced!  I am still enjoying my usual fall activities though.  Sunday we went to the pumpkin patch and last week the boys and I went apple picking at Wildemoore in Chalfont with some friends.  We went on a Wednesday morning while school was in session, and we were the only ones there.  I hope to also get to Solebury Orchards later this month.

The boys were more interested in taking the apples out of the bucket.  Here is a picture of my little helpers.  They are 18 months old now and getting so big!

We picked Winesap, Macintosh, and Ida Red varieties, which are all supposed to be good for cooking and baking.  That bucket held about 25 lbs of apples! The apples are very good- nice and tart, and not mealy at all.

I decided to bake some apple pies with some of the apples we picked.  I used this recipe from www.allrecipes.com : http://allrecipes.com/recipe/apple-pie-3/detail.aspx  They came out so delicious!  I used a mixture of all three types of apples in each pie. I was out of nutmeg, so I used a teaspoon and a half of pumpkin pie spice instead of the three different spices (the ingredients were similar).  I also just brushed the crust with milk and dusted with turbinado sugar instead of the egg wash.  The crust got a little over-browned (next time I will cover it part way through- I should have watched that more closely).  I plan to make more this week, along with a huge batch of applesauce.