My wife recently found a great apple crisp topping on a blog named Eggbeater. (It's actually a topping for any fruit crisp. But currently we have a lot of apples from the tree in our back yard.)
This week I was supposed to help make apple crisp for a Sukkot party last night. My role was supposedly simple. My wife prepared a mixture of cranberries, walnut pieces, and cinnamon to add to the apples in the main part of the crisp. She had prepared the topping the night before: it was waiting in the freezer on its jelly roll pan (and on a silpat) for me to crumble.
(Note: the topping recipe uses 3 cups of flour. To be gluten-free we use 1 cup each of quinoa, amaranth, and millet flours.)
My job was to prepare a lot of apples, put together the crisp, and bake it. We have an apple peeler/corer so the apple preparation goes quickly, even for our backyard apples which often have a bad spot or two that need removing (removing blemishes is quick once the apple has become one big spiral).
But three things went wrong...
First, I never caught on that the crisp topping was enough for four crisps. I used it all! My goodness that was a tasty dessert last night. But it had quite a bit more butter and sugar per serving than anything my wife and I normally bake.
Second, we are going to a final Sukkot and Simchat Torah camping party this weekend, and wanted to make more crisp. So I needed to bake more topping tonight.
Third, when I got home I locked myself out of the house. I had arrived by bicycle, and after parking in the garage went back outside to get the mail. By habit I closed and latched the garage door behind me. Oops. I got quite a bit of yard work done. Then I finally broke into the house as it was about to get dark: last night I had gotten in trouble for not leaving a light on for the lovebirds and I was not about to get scolded two nights in a row! I learn from my mistakes, yep...
(Breaking into the house was a bit tricky. But we have a ladder out in the back yard for apple picking, and I know our house. The trick I figured out will not work a second time, so I better find a good place for hiding a spare key.)
So now it's quarter past seven and I am still only at the stage of milling more grain. We happened to be out of milled quinoa and amaranth, so I need to refill our usual supply as well as make an additional cup of those for the topping recipe.
While typing this the mixer has cooled off. Quinoa's turn now...
