apple cider caramels + the book is here!

So, friends. Yesterday was the day, the day that that the 336-page, 2.8-pound bundle of joy that I began working on over three years ago tip-toed cautiously out of my tiny kitchen in hopes that youll make a home for it in yours.

You know, so, no big deal at all.

Whats in the book? Seeing as I already showed you the cover, I thought Id show you what the book looked like naked. (Gasp!) You see, I was pushing for a jacketless cover (those paper flaps, they irk me) and we compromised by having a different cover inside that would be a treat for people who get excited about things like that. Between the covers, there are 105 recipes (85 percent that have never been seen on this site), about two-thirds of them are savory (including a beloved recipe for featherlight Gnocchi in Tomato Broth, a Flat Roasted Chicken with Tiny Potatoes inspired by something we bought on a Paris street, and an absolutely hideous but boundlessly delicious Wild Rice Gratin with Kale and Caramelized Onions) and the rest are for sweets things (such as my sons towering second birthday SMore Cake, and what I consider two of the ultimate Thanksgiving desserts, a Cheesecake-Marbled Pumpkin Gingersnap Tart and the Deepest Dish Apple Pie youve ever seen). There are over 300 photos in the book, lots of stories and also this one little other thing that I pressed for, a cookbook that stays open on your kitchen counter when you want it to. My goodness, this makes me happy, as happy as I hope those Artichoke Heart-Stuffed Shells will make you.

As you can imagine, yesterday didnt exactly go the way we had in mind. Monday night, as Alex was giving Jacob a bath and I started typing this post, a monster storm was making landfall on the East Coast. I heard a loud boom from the direction of the Con Ed plant on Avenue D, and the sky went briefly green, then turquoise. You can imagine the rest power outage, phone outage, the discovery that we dont actually own a flashlight (am I good at being an adult or what?) but that I mix a solid Perfect Manhattan by candlelight. Needless to say, we got off easy. Our home is intact, the lights always go back on on Broadway, and were now cozied up at my in-laws while some of this simmers on the stove. I cant even imagine some of the devastation many of you woke up to yesterday. I hope you and your loved ones are all safe and dry.

In the last few months, Ive been asked a few times if I have a favorite recipe in the book. I usually clutch my chest in mock horror and say something along the lines of, I cannot believe you would ask me to choose a favorite child! But, of course, Im lying because this, this is my favorite. These apple cider caramels are my love letter autumn in my city, my attempt, as I wrote in the book, to pack everything I love about New York City in October the carpet of fiery leaves on the ground from the trees I didnt even know we had; the sky, impossibly blue; the air, drinkably crisp; the temperature finally delicious enough that it implores you to spend hours wandering around, sipping warm spiced apple cider from the Greenmarkets into one tiny square.

To make them, you take a quart of fresh apple cider and boil and boil it until it is a slip of its original volume, just syrupy apple impact. Then, you expand this syrup into a cinnamon-scented buttery caramel with hidden crunches of sea salt. Theyre the most intense caramels that Ive ever made and if you had a bucket of these at your door when I went trick-or-treating, well, Id steal them. Thus, you should either not invite me anywhere or make a lot. I think you know what you need to do.

Thank you: Ive gotten so many kind, wonderful notes in the last couple asking as to our safety and also from many of your who already received your books and are cooking from them. I dont know what I did to get such a warm, sweet bundle of people for readers, but you make all of this 100 times more fun. Thank you.

Book tour: We were so sad to have had to cancel the NYC launch event at Williams-Sonoma yesterday evening, and hope to reschedule it as soon as possible. If all goes well (cross your fingers for us?), Ill be hopping on a flight to the West Coast on Thursday morning and then the rest of the tour will begin. Los Angeles, Napa, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Portland, Vancouver and Seattle, I hope I hope I get to meet all of you.

One year ago: Baked Pumpkin and Sour Cream Puddings
Two years ago: Buckeyes
Three years ago: Baked Chicken Meatballs
Four years ago: Cabbage and Mushroom Galette
Five years ago: Cranberry, Caramel and Almond Tart
Six years ago: Bretzel Rolls

Apple Cider Caramels
From The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Apple cider (sometimes called sweet or soft cider), as Im referring to it here, is different from both apple juice and the hard, or alcoholic, fermented apple cider. Its a fresh, unfiltered (it has sediment), raw apple juice the juice literally pressed from fresh apples. Its unpasteurized, and must be refrigerated, because its perishable. In the Northeast, I usually find it at farm stands and some grocery stores. I occasionally find vacuum- sealed bottles called apple cider in the juice aisle, but none of the bottled varieties that Ive tried has the same delicate apple flavor as the more perishable stuff sold in the refrigerator section.

4 cups (945 ml) apple cider
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, or less of a finer one
8 tablespoons (115 grams or 1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (110 grams) packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup (80 ml) heavy cream
Neutral oil for the knife

Boil the apple cider in a 3- to- 4- quart saucepan over high heat until it is reduced to a dark, thick syrup, between 1/3 and 1/2 cup in volume. This takes about 35 to 40 minutes on my stove. Stir occasionally.

Meanwhile, get your other ingredients in order, because you wont have time to spare once the candy is cooking. Line the bottom and sides of an 8- inch straight- sided square metal baking pan with 2 long sheets of crisscrossed parchment. Set it aside. Stir the cinnamon and flaky salt together in a small dish.

Once you are finished reducing the apple cider, remove it from the heat and stir in the butter, sugars, and heavy cream. Return the pot to medium- high heat with a candy thermometer attached to the side, and let it boil until the thermometer reads 252 degrees, only about 5 minutes. Keep a close eye on it.

(Dont have a candy or deep- fry thermometer? Have a bowl of very cold water ready, and cook the caramel until a tiny spoonful dropped into the water becomes firm, chewy, and able to be plied into a ball.)

Immediately remove caramel from heat, add the cinnamon- salt mixture, and give the caramel several stirs to distribute it evenly. Pour caramel into the prepared pan. Let it sit until cool and firmabout 2 hours, though it goes faster in the fridge. Once caramel is firm, use your parchment paper sling to transfer the block to a cutting board. Use a well- oiled knife, oiling it after each cut (trust me!), to cut the caramel into 1-by-1-inch squares. Wrap each one in a 4-inch square of waxed paper, twisting the sides to close. Caramels will be somewhat on the soft side at room temperature, and chewy/firm from the fridge.

Do ahead: Caramels keep, in an airtight container at room temperature, for two weeks, but really, good luck with that.

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Apple Cider Cinnamon Jelly Recipe - Food.com - 353475 I have not tried jelly. I'm posting this for safe keeping. I found this recipe Complete Book Of Small Batch Preserves. This full bodied taste of fresh apple cider ... Six Sisters' Stuff: Apple Cider Caramel Cookies Recipe 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 (14 ounce) bag Kraft Caramels Instructions The Cooking Photographer: Caramel Stuffed Apple Cider Cookies Last weekend I visited a ginourmous Wal-Mart in the big town of Post Falls, Idaho. There I proceeded to hunt down bags of Kraft Caramels, because where I live ... gimme some oven Blog Archive caramel apple cider cookies ... Last weekend, I took a trip with my lovely book club girls.camping! Thats right! A bunch of city girls road tripped it to spend a 40-degree evening together ... Apple Cider Caramels Our Best Bites Note: This recipe has been modified from when it was originally posted for greater user-friendliness, particularly in dissolving the sugar. First of all, I hope ... Apple Cider Brined Turkey Recipe - Food.com - 334879 FROM the www.chefscatalog.com website - Diane Morgan, The Thanksgiving Table (Chronicle Books, 2001). If you would like to purchase this book, please visit Chronicle ... SmithsAppleFarm.com 24405 Poquette Lake Road Shell Lake ... Bakery & Gift Shop. Apple Cider Donuts are made fresh daily, there are times in the fall when pumpkin ... Apple Cider Cups Busy Mommy: An Iowa Mom Blog There's something about this time of year that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. As the weather starts to turn colder, leaves change and fall and Table of Two "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." - Virginia Woolf (by Michele J Martin) DIY Salt Caramels Un-Gift Guide 2008 The Kitchn Here's another wonderfully easy candy recipe for the holidays - salt caramels! Here's the recipe, along with links to great ideas for pretty wrapping and packaging.

apple mosaic tart with salted caramel

My husband likes to joke that every other comment on this site in the month of October is, Help! I went apple picking and I brought home 20 pounds of apples and I dont know how to use them up! Its not true, of course; its every five or six comments. We mostly have a giggle about it because we didnt know how one could go to an apple grove and not realize that 20 of apples is an impossible amount to munch your way through, no matter how enthusiastic of an apple-eater you might be. Furthermore, seeing as quite often, only one apple type is ripe at a time, which means youre youre not likely bringing a mix home that might sustain your interest from apple to apple, ad inifinitum. So, you know where this is going. Guys, we went apple picking last weekend and I brought home almost 15 pounds of apples! What do I do with them?

I am kidding, mostly. I have a few ideas for them. The first 6 pounds went to the largest batch of applesauce, ever, half of which is in the freezer for my resident Applesauce Junkie. The next few pounds were munched on, happily. A few pounds are on the table in a bowl, though I think Ramona Quimby must have snuck in because I keep noticing single, tiny bites taken out of each (because the first bite is the tastiest). Next, well, this happened. And once this happens, I think youre going to be glad you have a bunch of pounds of apples left, because this is the kind of stuff that calls for a repeat performance.

Are you taking submissions for your new favorite dead simple fall dessert? I understand that competition in this arena is pretty fierce. Ive already shared Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls this month, and I dont expect you to throw them over so quickly in the Winning October Bellies and Minds race. If it helps, you can relegate them to the breakfast category. Of course, that still leaves the Simplest Apple Tart. But every five or so years, well, I think there should be a new simple apple tart in town, and I think it should be this one.

This tart is, in essence, a French apple tart, a simple affair involving puffed pasty, thin slices of apples fanned this way and that before they are dotted with butter, sprinkled with sugar and baked in the oven until they sodder together into an puddled-apple-butter-caramel fusion that is entirely greater than the sum of its parts. The only places I take issue with these tarts is in their linear approach to apples (I prefer, and consider it futile to resist, the stunning look and fanning pattern of Lady Ms Apple Tapestry Tart) and in the finishing step, where a little jam (usually apricot or something chosen for its light color, but never its flavor harmony with the fruit below it) is melted to form a glaze that is brushed over the tart after it finishes baking. Apricot jam has no place on my apples. Surely, I reasoned, there are other ways to melt sugar into a glaze, maybe even a deeply cooked, caramelized one with coppery burnt sugar notes and a bit of sea salt and maybe if you let it bake into the apples for a few final minutes in the oven something really wonderful would happen and

The result is a mosaic of fall apple bliss. Heres where Im supposed to say You wont believe how good just puffed pastry, apples, butter, sugar and salt can taste together, but friends, I think you would believe me, that you do, you get it. And that is exactly why you have to make this this weekend.

Two years ago: Cauiliflower and Parmesan Cake
Three years ago: Apple Cider Doughnuts
Four years ago: Meatballs and Spaghetti and Mollys Apple Tarte Tatin
Five years ago: Pumpkin Bread Pudding
Six years ago: Wild Mushroom Galette

Apple Mosaic Tart with Salted Caramel

Puffed pastry is a wonderful thing to keep around in your freezer. It comes at all price points, but I do think that the best ones contain only butter, not shortening. DuFour is my favorite brand; it is an investment that you will be able to taste in every bite and this is the kind of tart where youll really be able to tell. If you buy some for this recipe, buy two. Youll thank me next week, when you need to make it again.

Be ye not intimidated by homemade caramel. I promise, it can be so simple. You dont need water, corn syrup, a pastry brush or exclamation point-ed nerve-wracking admonitions to not stir. You just put some sugar in an empty saucepan, turn the heat up and wait a few minutes. It will melt; it always does.

Serves 12 (It should be sliced like this earlier version, not the final one I hastily photographed here.)

Tart base
14-ounce package puff pastry, defrosted in fridge overnight
3 large or 4 medium apples (about 1 1/4 punds)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into small bits

Salted caramel glaze
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (or salted, but then ease up on the sea salt)
1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt (or half as much table salt)
2 tablespoons heavy cream

Heat your oven to 400F. Line a rimmed baking sheet or jelly roll pan with parchment paper. Ideally you would use a 1015-inch jelly roll pan, as I do here. A smaller pan will make a thicker tart (and you might need fewer apples). In a larger pan, you can still fit a 1015-inch tart, which I think is the ideal size here.

Lightly flour your counter and lay out your pastry. Flour the top and gently roll it until it fits inside your baking sheet, and transfer it there. Try not to roll it any bigger than youll need it, or youll have to trim, which means youll have to sprinkle the trimmings with cinnamon-sugar and bake them into cookie-sized segments for snacks. And that would be terrible.

Peel the apples and cut them in half top-to-bottom. Remove the cores and stems (I like to use a melon baller and/or a pairing knife). Slice the apples halves crosswise as thinly as you can with a knife, or to about 1/16-inch thickness with a mandoline. Leaving a 1/2-inch border, fan the apples around the tart in slightly overlapping concentric rectangles each apple should overlap the one before so that only about 3/4-inch of the previous apple will be visible until you reach the middle. Sprinkle the apples evenly with the first two tablespoons of sugar then dot with the first two tablespoons butter.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the edges of the tart are brown and the edges of the apples begin to take on some color. If you sliced your apples by hand and they were on the thicker side, you might need a little more baking time to cook them through. The apples should feel soft, but dry to the touch. If you puffed pasty bubbles dramatically in any place during the baking time, simply poke it with a knife or skewer so that it deflates. This is fun, I promise.

Meanwhile, about 20 minutes into the baking time, make your glaze. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, melt your last 1/4 cup sugar; this will take about 3 minutes. Cook the liquefied sugar to a nice copper color, another minute or two. Off the heat, add the sea salt and butter and stir until the butter melts and is incorporated. Add the heavy cream and return to the stove over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until you have a lovely, bronzed caramel syrup, just another minute, two, tops. Set aside until needed. You may need to briefly rewarm it to thin the caramel before brushing it over the tart.

After the tart has baked, transfer it to a cooling rack, but leave the oven on. Using very short, gentle strokes, and brushing in the direction that the apples fan to mess up their design as little as possible, brush the entire tart, including the exposed pastry, with the salted caramel glaze. You might have a little leftover. Whatever you do, do not spread it on a sliced apple for a snack. Trust me.

Return the apple tart to the oven for 5 to 10 more minutes, until the caramel glaze bubbles. Let tart cool complete before cutting into 12 squares. Serve plain, with coffee or tea, if youre feeling grown-up or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, if youre feeling particularly indulgent.

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