Autumn's on the way

Easy apple coffee cake!

From:  http://simpledailyrecipes.com/16145/honey-apple-coffeecake/

ALRIGHT, HERE’S ALL IT TAKES

Makes 12 servings

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup apple juice
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 large red apples
• 1/2 cup pecan halves

Glaze

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 cup honey

Heat the oven to 400ºF.  Grease a 9- by 13-inch baking pan with butter.

In a medium size bowl, combine the flour, sugar and baking powder.  Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles crumbs. (Use your hands, it’s easier and doesn’t take that long to get the results needed.)

In a separate bowl, beat together the egg, apple juice, and vanilla.  Stir into the dry ingredients.

Peel, core, and cut the apples into 1/2-inch slices.  Arrange on top of the batter.

Dot the apple slices with the pecan halves.

For the GLAZE, melt the butter and honey in a small bowl in the microwave at 70% power for 1 minute.  If the butter isn’t quite melted, continue warming the mix at 70% power for 20 second intervals.   Pour the glaze over the apples and pecans.

BAKE for 35 minutes.  Serve warm.

September is National Honey Month! Know your honey facts?

Fun facts about honey! 

Reposted from http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/09/19/national-honey-month/

Thanks to our fan Scott Counts for today's Blog post suggestion! :)  National honey month While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday. September is National Honey Month. Fun fact: to make one pound of honey, a honeybee needs to tap 2 million flowers. No wonder they’re called worker bees.

Honey has been around since before the dawn of humanity, but we’ve been relying on it to sweeten our food and drink since we caught on. Some of the earliest references to honey can be found in paintings on cave walls in Spain and Greece.

It’s often said that with honey our civilization would grind to a halt, and while that scenario is likely a ways off, let’s look at the consequences. According to theNational Honey Board, without honeybees, there’d be no almonds. Almonds depend 100% on honeybee pollination. Apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries and sunflowers are 90% dependent on honeybees too. Not to mention, most fruits and vegetables are pollinated this way.

But enough with this end of the world stuff. Honey has about the same fructose and glucose as sugar, which means it’s just as sweet, but not refined. Also, unlike cane sugar, which tastes the same no matter where you got it from, honey can taste different based on the flower and the insect. So honey from an avocado flower will taste completely different from orange blossom honey. The United States Department of Agriculture grades honey into three categories, and no water can be added to honey if it is labeled as such. According to the USDA, honey must be “a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance...this includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners." The USDA also cautions that because of their less developed digestive systems, children under one should not eat honey because they could contract botulism. Honey is mostly used in baking and in hot tea as a sweetener, but more adventurous uses include honey beer (even the White House agrees), barbecue sauces and even salad dressings. Because different honeys can taste so different, it’s worth trying out a few exotic ones before settling on the kind found in a bear bottle. And because honey lasts (almost) forever, you don’t need to worry about it sitting in your cupboard and going bad. Another interesting use of honey, in Jewish tradition, honey and apples are eaten during Rosh Hashanah (which ended yesterday) to usher in the new year.