Beetzza

I just returned from a brief trip east, undertaken in part to see long-neglected friends, spend time with my little sister, go on much-delayed adventures, and finish up that Master's degree I've been paying for, but primarily to make a beet-goat cheese pie that's been over a year in planning.

And by pie, it turned out we meant pizza pie. Which, of course, called for a pizza party.

My bosom friend Barbara and I made a lot of pizza doughs (Smitten Kitchen's recipe x16), bought way too much cheese and one very large can of tomatoes at Claudio's (which got smushed and mixed with garlic, olive oil, and basil), turned up the oven to 500°F, and invited over a bunch of folks with the instructions to bring either pizza toppings or beer.

And people brought such good things! Peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, prosciutto, homemade pepperoni... there was no overlap and an abundance of everything. And everyone got a chance to do a little baking (that's everyone's favorite part of a party, right? Not just me?) and sharing and eating.

For our contribution, we caramelized an onion, boiled and sliced a bunch of beets, crumbled some goat cheese, artistically (or perhaps the more accurate term would be drunkenly) layered it all on a pizza crust, and baked it for about 15 minutes.

It was so damn good.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat.

Let me update you on what I haven't found the time to write about:

Not having much experience with it before, I tried to get in every moment of autumn this year. And found that the most delicious, most productive, and most enjoyable way to experiencing the colors, tastes, and essence of the season is to eat as many apples as possible.

So when I took a mini-road trip up to Ithaca for the apple festival, and volunteered to make birthday cake for our beautiful hostesses, I found this apple cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

 Not really a birthday cake, but it was pretty good.

But I wasn't happy with it. It was more a breakfast-y coffee cake than the wet, apple-y, spice laden cake I'd been hoping for. So I tried again, this time with David Lebovitz's apple spice cake recipe.

Right off the bat it calls for apples and butter, so you know it's a winner. 

 It was a hit when I brought it to class - both the dreadlocked, Jamaican, high school history teacher and the middle-aged family woman studying women's history were very complimentary. It's one of those nice, simple recipes I'll be happy to make over and over again.

 I don't have a bundt pan, so it's not quite as pretty as it ought to be, but it did taste exactly right. Possibly because I doubled all the spices?

For Thanksgiving, though, I went the more traditional route, with this apple-cranberry pie from Cook's Illustrated. Cook's requires a subscription to view their recipes (hence the link elsewhere for the pie recipe), but they are always marvelous. This is the pie recipe that they used to feature their now-notorious vodka pie crust - apparently using vodka instead of water makes the crust easier to handle but doesn't affect the structure. I'm pretty happy with my crumbly, hard-to-handle, ugly pie crusts and I never have a lot of vodka on hand, so I still haven't made it, but this pie is amazing. 

 And patriotic.

But sometimes even simple baking is too much. Finals, holidays, and the end of the apple season coincided in a big way this year, so I decided to repeat my cheap, easy, homemade gift of last year and make everyone apple sauce.

Most apple sauce recipes are pretty simple. Mine cuts the ingredients in half. Apples, cinnamon. That's it. No added sugar, no other spices. Just a variety of apples cooked together with cinnamon.

And then you can them and get on an airplane with a really heavy suitcase.

 To recap:

Apples are delicious.