Celebrating Apple Day

National Apple Day falls on the 21st of October. Our celebration of apples started back in the summer holidays, thanks to the presence of four apple trees in our orchard garden. Among these, the first to be ready is the delicious red apple 'Fiesta', a crisp and juicy dessert apple with a rich aromatic flavour. The next variety we havest is the 'Katy', an attractive yellow-skinned dessert apple with a pink blush, known for being a heavy cropper most years. It offers a sweet and juicy taste with a bit of a bite. Finally, are the two 'Egremont Russets', known for their brown skin with a pink blush, making them one of the most popular russet varieties. Additionally, we have access to two more trees belonging to our neighbors, which bear unlabeled cooking apples that grow over the fence line. In exchange for being able to pick these apples, members of the Orchard Training Cookery Club return some of the fruit in the form of delicious apple goods, such as pie fillings, crumbles, and apple cakes.

This year, we have been disappointed with the damp and cold weather, which has significantly affected our harvest of gooseberries and plums due to poor pollination in spring. On the other hand, the pears and apples have thrived. The apple trees have consistently produced abundant crops, but this year's harvest has been exceptional. All our students have been able to enjoy plenty of apples, our elderly neighbors have declined further offerings, and we have even placed a bucket at the end of the driveway for dog walkers and passersby to help themselves.

At the Orchard Training Cookery Club, we are nearly out of ideas on how to utilise all of them. Here is a list of what we have accomplished thus far:

Apple Rings We have prepared numerous batches of these delicious treats from the Fiesta. Dried apple rings make for a nutritious snack, offering essential vitamins and a generous dose of prebiotic fiber that nourishes gut bacteria, aiding in the prevention of constipation. The most remarkable aspect of this snack is that it contains no added sugar!

Fruit Leathers are another snack we prepared, this time with a touch of added sugar. We were careful to use only a small amount since we were using dessert apples. The sugar served as a preservative rather than for flavor enhancement. We ended up making a large quantity of fruit leather, enough to cover a herd of cows. Some batches were infused with cinnamon, others with blackberries, and one with a generous amount of lemon juice. The combinations of apple and blackberry, and apple and cinnamon were the most favored in taste tests. The pure apple variation came in second, while the lemon version ranked last, as the lemon seemed to alter the texture slightly.

Diced Dried Apple: While our knife skills may not be advanced enough to dice fresh apples, we do have plenty of perfectly sized pieces of dried apple. At the Orchard Training Cookery Club, where we hold many of our DT lessons, we experimented with enriched dough recipes such as Easter Hot Cross Buns, using both fresh and dried apples. The results of taste and texture tests favored the recipes that included dried apples. Therefore, we now have enough dried apple for our Christmas and Easter baking needs.

In order to deal with the excess apples harvested from the trees, we opted to prepare jam. To utilize the last of the plums and tomake them go further, we devised a simple recipe combining plums and apples to make jam. This specific recipe was designed for beginners in Design and Technology classes at the KS2 level. To accommodate the KS3 students, we decided to raise the complexity level and experimented with creating Apple and Herbal Jellies. By using a homemade apple jelly as a base, we were able to infuse various herbs, and the addition of vinegar enhanced the flavor with a pleasant sweet and sour twist. We concocted Apple and Mint jelly, Apple and Rosemary for lamb dishes, Apple and Thyme for roast chicken and turkey (ideal for our Christmas Dinner project), and Apple and Sage for roast pork. As a final choice, we included chili to the last batch. While most batches exceeded the jar capacity, one of us was eager to skim off the foam from the boiling jelly and accidentally removed a bit too much, resulting in a shortage of half a jar. Nevertheless, such mishaps are part of our learning process.

Our bakers are also involved in our preparations, as we have frozen a large quantity of apples for apple pies and crumbles. While we continue to handle incoming apple supplies, freezing them remains the most practical option. Once the urgency to avoid wasting the harvest decreases, we will offer pastry-making lessons and share various crumble recipes.