When fall comes rolling in to our small Eastern Ontario town, my senses go wild. The colours of the autumn trees are beautiful, the feel of the crisp cool air is so refreshing and the crunch of a Red Gala apple straight from the orchard pleases my taste buds more than ever before.
It is autumn in Canada, and I couldn’t be happier.
Every fall we make many trips to the orchard to fill our baskets to the brim with apples – McIntosh, Gala, Spartan, Cortland, Empire, they are all there. Something about walking down the rows of trees, picking our own fruit and then coming home to prep and bake it is so refreshing. Just the family time alone is well worth the trip to the orchard rather than the grocery store. As every year passes, Olive gets more and more involved in the entire process. I remember our first visit to the orchard. She was just learning to walk, and decided to pick all the apples off the ground. Now, she is jumping, trying to find the biggest ones on the trees. Every fall we find that our basement is full of buckets and buckets of apples, ready to use whenever we have the urge (which is often)!
Our go-to, a few times a week, is a salted caramel apple pie.
My first and foremost baking love is pie. I am most definitely in a love affair with it, and I am happy to say that Olive feels the same way. At 3 years old, she knows how to roll out her crust, place it in the pie tin, prepare and combine the filling, and crimp the top crust. Sometimes her pies are filled with sprinkles or rice krispies, but her favourite, without a doubt, is apple.
In our kitchen, Olive has her own mini-pie-plate. As I make a big pie for the family, she makes a personal sized one for herself. The proportions are usually always different, but tasty none-the-less! Here you will find the recipe for a 9” salted caramel apple pie (not the mini version)!!
Make and Taste 