Sunday, October 9, 2011

Harvest Time

A rare three-day weekend finds me in my hometown of Guilford, Connecticut, enjoying some time away from the city.   It being apple season, I decided to kick the foraging for local produce up a notch and visit Bishop's Orchards.  Apples were always my favorite fruit to pick at Bishop's as a little kid, because you get a ride up to the orchard on the back of a tractor.
Still fun.

I guess apple picking was a popular activity this year, because a lot of the trees were picked clean.  There were plenty of Staymans and Ida Reds left though, both crispy, tart varieties great for making desserts. 


My mom and I got a bag each, and then went home to figure out what to do with them, keeping the October Unprocessed challenge in mind.

I found some cocoa powder in the kitchen claming to only contain that one ingredient, and a package of grass-fed butter, and decided to give them the unprocessed ok. ("Unprocessed" really has an aggravatingly loose definition, but I suppose part of the excercise is making yourself think.) 

After melting four tablespoons of butter in a small frying pan, I mixed in seven tablespoons of cocoa, and about six ounces of maple syrup for a sweetener.  When the mixture was nice and smooth, we shined up a couple of apples and dipped them in it, then sprinkled on some raw oats for texture, and left them in the fridge for about an hour so the chocolate would set.


The chocolate sauce was still quite dark, which, together with the tang of the apples, made a really interesting bite.  A great fall snack, if you ask me!

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