Ever since I moved to Montreal and discovered all the surrounding apple orchards I have made an effort to get myself a giant bag of apples. Nothing says fall to me like apple picking. For the second year in a row, I ventured out with Dayle, Dave and Zak (Andrew couldn’t make it out this year, work shmurk). Dayle and I have been apple picking for a few years now, I still remember our first time — when she neglected to mention her severe motion sickness after I forced her onto a ferry to Oka — we had such a wonderful day out with our choir girls. More than 10 years later, this feels like a traditional family outing that I would hate to miss. Zak is 2 going on 5 and it was so much fun climbing ladders and racing through trees with him.
Dave, Zak and Dayle
This year we went to Quinn Farms where they have apples, animals, pumpkin patches and plenty of heavy duty trucks for a boy to climb on. This is a big farm, you can pick strawberries and asparagus in the summer and cut down Christmas trees in the winter, so they have a store with jams and fresh veggies and a little hot dog and soup stand. They have hot apple cider and fresh apple juice, popcorn and candied apples. They also sell baked goods, nothing gluten free unfortunately. Zak and I picked up a candied apple and are both happy to report we miraculously still have all our teeth; sadly, I wouldn’t recommend these shiny red treats. The candy was really hard and stuck to your teeth and once you got to the apple your face was fluorescent from the dye (that you could taste more than the sugar).
Red dye no. 4
We picked two 18 pound bags of two apple varieties, Cortland and Empire. Apparently Cortland are better for baking, so that is what I did when I got home. Thanks to my Bob’s Red Mill gf oats and gf all purpose flour I was able to whip up a crisp!
Apple, blueberry and raspberry Crisp
GF Apple crisp
This is a gf, nut free version of the crisp my mom makes, it’s easy and it’s always delicious! It’s also good for breakfast.
What you’ll need:
2 cups gf oatmeal (if you want nuts use 1 cup oats and 1 cup pecans), 1/3 cup of all purpose gf flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 3/4 cup of melted butter (1/2 cup will do the trick too), 1/2 tsp. salt, as many peeled and sliced apples as you can fit into your baking dish, any other fruit you might want to bake in there (I love blueberries and raspberries, dried cherries, pears and rhubarb)
Preheated oven (325〫), baking dish (this is enough crisp to cover a 9″x 13″ dish)
Layer your fruit into your baking dish, don’t be afraid to heap. Mix the rest of the ingredients and sprinkle on top. Bake for about an hour or until the fruit starts to bubble up along the edges. Eat a la mode or with whip cream or all by itself.
So my crisp used 9 large apples, now I just have to figure out how to deal with the 15 pounds of apples I have left…I see apple bunt cake in my very near future (just saw a recipe in allergic living). Happy Fall!
girl verses gluten 