Like most people, I often take my work home.  But in my case, I take home CREC fruit to see how it processes so that I know when people ask me. I know that our newer black currant berries have a lot more pectin that our past varieties when made into jam. I know that even though I always dreamed of making red currant jelly, I don’t really like it. Even though some fresh Juneberries have less flavor, they still make great pie! Aronia berries are not great fresh but frozen berries are amazingly good in oatmeal, yogurt and banana bread. Grapes take 12-24 hours to turn into raisins! And while Honeycrisp apples last the longest, I know that Zestar apples make the tastiest dried apples.

Here is a recipe for a cake that I made for a recent meeting at CREC. It received many compliments:

Teddie's Apple Cake

3 cups peeled, cored and diced (1/2”) tart apples, like Honeycrisp

½ tsp grated lemon peel and some juice squeezed over the apples

1 ¼ cups vegetable oil

1 ½ cups sugar

3 eggs

3 cups flour (2c all-purpose, 1c whole wheat)

¾ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup chopped nuts

½ cup raisins warmed in rum

(I used homemade Somerset Seedless raisins)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch tube (Bundt) pan. Beat the oil and sugar together in a mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment) while assembling the remaining ingredients. After about 5 minutes, add the eggs and beat until the mixture is creamy.

Sift together 3 cups of flour, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and baking soda. Stir into the batter. Add the vanilla, apples, nuts and raisins (plus liquid) and stir until combined.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan. Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan before turning out. Serve at room temperature with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, if desired.

**This really is a nice cake. It keeps for days and can be made several days in advance. I usually blanch at this amount of oil, but it is important.  It keeps the cake moist but not soggy and allows the crust to stay firm. I took note of user comments and the above recipe reflects the changes I made.

The recipe and comments I used are behind a paywall, but this site has the exact original recipe: https://food52.com/recipes/19828-teddie-s-apple-cake

Enjoy using your harvest!

Harvested apples at the CREC from the Northern Hardy Fruit Evaluation Project.

Kathy Wiederholt
Kathy.wiederholt@ndsu.edu
CREC Fruit Project Manager