Recipe of the Month: Apple Brown Betty

As the days ticked down toward Christmas and our annual trip to Indiana, I realized that I had only a limited amount of time to fit in a Recipe of the Month for December. We wouldn't be cooking anything during our time out there, and by the time we got home the month would be nearly over. So if we wanted to test out a new recipe, it would probably have to be this week.

I went through both my new vegan cookbooks to see if I'd bookmarked any recipes we hadn't tried yet, but the only ones I found were things like bean burgers and spicy grits, which weren't sufficiently veggie-focused. So I started perusing the rest of the cookbooks on my shelf, and I happened on one by Olwen Woodier with the simple name Apple Cookbook. That reminded me that the current rules of my Recipe of the Month challenge allow for both fruit- and veggie-based recipes, so there was nothing to stop me from choosing an apple-themed dessert for this month.

The one I picked was called Apple Brown Betty. I don't want to infringe on Olwen Woodier's copyright by reproducing the recipe exactly, but the basic idea is simple: thinly sliced apples layered in a pan with a crumble made from bread, sugar, apple-pie spices, and melted butter. Woodier's version also called for a bit of lemon juice in the crumble and some apple juice or cider poured over top before baking. The recipe as written wasn't vegan, but it was easy enough to swap out the butter for our homemade plant butter.

With this substitution, we already had most of the necessary ingredients for this dish on hand. The one sticking point was the apple cider. This isn't something we usually have in the fridge, and with the thermometer below freezing and snow coming down, we weren't keen to make a run out to the store for some. But since we were only making a half recipe of the brown Betty, we only needed a couple of tablespoons' worth, so Brian decided to see if he could squeeze that amount out of whole apples. He tried pressing some apple slices in my trusty Aeropress coffee maker, but all it did was squash them slightly. Then he tried grinding up the slices in our little Magic Bullet blender, which reduced them to a pulp but didn't liquefy them. Finally, he ran the pulp through the Aeropress, using the perforated metal filter disk to strain out the sediment, and succeeded in extracting enough juice for the recipe.

The dessert came out of the oven looking very pretty and very wholesome, with its chunks of whole-wheat bread topping over a base of sliced apple. It tasted wholesome, too, with the apple flavor being very much to the fore. However, when I asked Brian how much sugar had gone into it, he said the half-sized recipe used six tablespoons. That means the roughly one-quarter of the dish I ate contained four and a half teaspoons—three-quarters of my recommended daily limit. Oops, maybe not so wholesome.

Brian said we could probably get away with using even less sugar in the topping, as he does with his apple crisp, which usually contains about four tablespoons. But given that the crisp is even easier to make and probably healthier, with its hearty topping of rolled oats, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to making brown Betty instead. So we'll probably save this recipe for occasions when we need to use up a few slices of stale bread and stick to crisp the rest of the time.

Adding and removing leaves

Thanksgiving is over, and that means it's time for our annual garden ritual: the Stealing of the Leaves We've found a good thick layer of leaves is the best possible surface to cover our garden paths and keep the weeds under control, and they're useful for mulching the planting areas too: the flower and herb beds, trees and bushes, asparagus and rhubarb, and even the raised garden beds. However, our three smallish plum trees don't drop nearly enough leaves in the fall to cover all this area, so we've resorted to swiping bags of leaves from the curb outside our neighbor's house. 

Brian argues that this isn't really stealing, since the neighbors clearly don't want them and the borough is probably only picking them up to keep them from accumulating in the street. However, I can't shake the feeling of guilt that we might be depriving the borough of a revenue source by taking them. Its website says only that the leaves get "delivered to a compost facility," not whether it gets paid for them, so I have no way of knowing whether the few bags we've snatched represent an added cost to the town or a net benefit. (I wouldn't mind paying the borough to compensate for what we take, but I don't know how to make the offer.) 

Either way, though, I don't feel guilty enough about it to stop doing it. For one thing, there's no other obvious way to get leaves in the quantities we need. Also, the bagged leaves are extra handy because we can use the brown paper bags as well as the leaves. Today, for instance, Brian dumped out several bags' worth of leaves in our front yard, then ripped up the bags into strips to lay down on our garden paths as an extra weed barrier. He then worked his way around the garden like Gromit laying down model railroad track, dumping leaves on top of the papered area and then laying out more paper in front of the leafed area until all the paths were covered.

As we raked out the scattered leaves, we discovered something odd: a lot of them weren't real. We kept spotting flashes of unnaturally bright color amid the brown, and when we zoomed in, we found they were fake leaves made of some kind of stiff fabric. We eventually ended up with a double handful of fake leaves and even some kind of branch covered in glitter and little baubles. We could only assume that some of our neighbors' yard decorations had fallen down and inadvertently got raked up along with the real leaves. This made me feel a bit better about stealing them, since this faux-liage definitely wasn't biodegradable and would only have created a headache for the composting facility.

Along with adding leaves to the places where we wanted them, we also had to make sure we didn't have any where they weren't wanted: in our gutters and downspouts. This is a considerably more onerous job, since we have to haul out our massive 18-foot extension ladder and run it up the back of the house. Brian ran into a bit of a snag trying to do this: he got the ladder fully extended on the ground only to discover that he couldn't lift it upright in that form. He had to telescope one end of it back down, prop it up against the wall, and then ratchet it up to full length before inching carefully up it while I held it steady from below. Luckily there were no leaves in that area, so all he had to do was take a quick peek before climbing back down. The front of the house, which is only one story, was much easier to check, and there he did spot a small clump of leaves near one end of the gutter that he had to clean out by moving the ladder to the porch steps on the south end of the house. Fortunately, it has multiple configurations, so he was able to set it up with one end on the steps and the other on the ground.

Thanks to our sturdy, adjustable ladder, this job was doable, but it would have been a lot easier if we had some way of viewing the gutters without the ladder so Brian would only have to climb up there if they were actually clogged. I've been toying with the idea of getting him a cheap camera drone for this purpose, like this $43 model on eBay. When I mentioned the idea to him, he admitted that he'd consider it $43 well spent if it saved him having to hoist himself up that ladder every fall. However, when I ran an online search on this idea, I found a Reddit thread arguing that (1) a drone of reasonable quality will cost at least a few hundred dollars, and (2) it's not actually all that easy to fly one close to a building. 

Fortunately, one Redditor in this thread offered what might be a better idea: taping a camera to "a very long aluminum pole/selfie stick" instead. I did a little hunting around on the Home Depot Site, and it looks like it's possible to buy one of those for around $40. It would probably be even better than a drone, since we could not only strap a camera phone onto it to check the gutters but also attach a tool to do the actual cleaning if necessary. That would be both easier and safer than sending Brian up a 16 foot ladder once a year. And it would leave us more time to to focus on moving leaves around at ground level.

Bonus recipe: Vegan pumpkin pie

My family's Thanksgiving dinner is a collaborative effort. My dad cooks the turkey, stuffing, and a veggie (which we supplement with our roasted broccoli). My aunt and uncle bring an assortment of delicacies for lunch (cheese, crackers, veggies, dips, and so forth). My brother-in-law brings a couple of good bottles of wine. And we provide our homemade pickles, cranberry sauce, and the all-important pies: one rhubarb, one pumpkin.

For years, Brian made both pies with butter crusts. But when we started making our own plant butter a couple of years ago, Brian decided to try using that in the crust instead. He had to experiment a bit with the recipe to get a dough that would make a reasonable lattice crust, but eventually he found that a ratio of about 3 parts canola to 8 parts refined coconut oil, without the soy milk, would do the job. It's trickier to work with than a butter crust, as the coconut oil has a lower melting point, but if you get it good and cold ahead of time and then work quickly, it can be done.

With this change, our rhubarb pie became vegan. However, we assumed that it would be impossible to do the same with our pumpkin pie, which has eggs and evaporated milk in the filling. And since no one in my family is vegan or otherwise averse to dairy, there was no strong incentive to try. 

But this year, with a bunch of leftover silken tofu in the fridge that needed to get used up before Thanksgiving weekend, Brian started wondering whether it could be put to use in pie form. And this got him thinking about the kappa carageenan that we use in our plant-based mozzarella. After all, this stuff is commonly used as both a thickener and a gelling agent; could adding it to our pumpkin mixture help it set up nice and firm without eggs?

To test this idea, he made a mini pie the week before Thanksgiving, replacing the evaporated milk and eggs with tofu, soymilk, and a teaspoon of kappa carageenan. This did indeed make the filling firm—quite a bit firmer than he expected. Rather than a soft custard, it came out as a smooth, solid layer with a texture that could best be compared to bologna. It proved that the idea was workable, but it was clear that we'd need to dial the carageenan way back to get the texture we were after. 

So, when preparing the pies for the actual Thanksgiving feast, Brian made two pumpkin pies: a full-sized one using our regular recipe, and a smaller one using only a quarter-teaspoon of the carageenan. He also added a bit of baking soda to help the filling puff up. He didn't want to slice into the pie before the family got to see it, but he tested the bit of filling that was left in the saucepan once it had cooled, and he found that the texture was indeed pretty close to what you'd expect in a pumpkin pie. 

This made him confident enough about the mini vegan pie to serve it up alongside the regular pumpkin and rhubarb pies on Thanksgiving Day. Most of the family ventured at least a small taste, and they all agreed that it tasted just like a pumpkin pie. With the two pumpkin pies side by side, it was quite clear that they weren't identical; the original version had a much softer texture. But it wasn't necessarily better, just different. If you like your filling a little on the firmer side, you might even prefer this version.

So, if you'd like to try this vegan pumpkin pie for your next holiday gathering, or any other time, here's the full recipe. The one Brian made was only one-quarter this size, but he's quadrupled all the quantities to produce a 9-inch pie recipe.

Vegan Pumpkin Pie

First, make the vegan pie shell. If you don't normally keep your flour in the fridge, start by putting 1 cup all-purpose flour in the refrigerator to chill. 

Melt 1/4 cup refined coconut oil and mix it with 1.5 Tbsp. canola oil in a medium-to-large bowl. Place oil mixture in fridge for 5-10 minutes, take out to whisk, then return to fridge. Repeat until the mixture has just solidified, then whip with an electric mixer for a minute and return to fridge for 30+ minutes. 

Add 1/2 tsp. salt and the cold flour to the solidified whipped oil mixture and use a pastry blender or fork to quickly combine the ingredients until the oil has disappeared into the flour. Return to the fridge if necessary. 

Add ice water to the mixture, one tablespoon at a time, using a fork to work it in after each addition, until the mixture begins to cohere and can be formed into a ball. Return to the fridge if necessary.

Generously coat a flat surface and a rolling pin with cold flour and carefully roll the dough flat (about 2 mm thick). Fold the rolled dough in half, lift it in the pie pan (5-6” for pilot; 9” for full), then unfold it. Adjust the position of the dough in the shell and use ice water to glue any breaks closed. Cut the dough hanging over the edges to about 1-2”, then roll it up and crimp it. Place the finished pie shell in the fridge until the filling is ready. 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. 

To make the filling, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp. kappa carageenan, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. powdered ginger, 1/4 tsp. cloves, 1/4 tsp. allspice, and 1/4 tsp. nutmeg. Mix thoroughly and set aside.

Blend 12 oz. silken tofu until smooth. Add 1 cup soymilk and 1 can pumpkin puree and blend thoroughly. In a saucepan, heat the liquid mixture, stirring, until it starts to bubble. 

Add combined dry ingredients to liquid and stir for five minutes. Mixture should continue to bubble throughout. 

Add 1/2 tsp. baking powder and quickly whisk it completely into the mixture. Immediately pour mixture into the prepared pie shell, then bake for 25+ minutes, until pie shell is thoroughly baked.