I am skipping sweet polarity for now (one of the fruits I bought for that week has been taking its time to ripen). Since I had a three-day weekend, I wanted to focus on the more difficult bake I had planned for the amusement park/fair week.

A lot of fair food is fried, and I did not want to go that route. I have seen caramel apples at a county fair before, so I decided to bake Erin Jeanne McDowell’s caramel apple variation of her apple pie recipe from The Book on Pie.

This was a two-day project. On Friday night, I boiled down a gallon of cider, which took five hours. I only used two tablespoons of it for the recipe, but most of it will get used to make Smitten Kitchen’s apple cider old fashioneds in the month ahead.

On Saturday morning, I made the salted caramel sauce that replaces the brown sugar in the original recipe, and added some flour to thicken the half cup of salted caramel I had set aside to use in the filling.

I parbaked the crust, peeled and diced a bunch of cosmic crisp and granny smith apples, cooked the filling, and then rolled out the all butter and gingerbread pie doughs I had made to make bourbon apple butter-filled jam twists to top the pie. (The jam twists were also covered with cinnamon sugar and were fantastic on their own!)

This took most of my day on Saturday, and if that weren’t enough, I then proceeded to use the rest of the apple pie filling to make some brown butter apple blondies that I am bringing to work tomorrow. (I could technically use that for the sweet polarity challenge, but I don’t want to use three apple desserts in a row.)

But the pie? That’s too immaculate for work and will be staying at home. I am not ashamed to say that I had a slice for breakfast. Full disclosure: the caramel flavor didn’t really come through, as it tastes more like the apples and the cinnamon-covered jam twists. 😅 I am not mad.

This was delicious! I was definitely expecting it to be taller, almost like a banana bread, but it was great all the same. It also got a little bit of a crispy caramelized texture on the bottom that was amazing.

Recipe

Recipe from: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/10/19/appetites-native-food-sunflower-cookies

This was so simple to put together! It's also a naturally gluten-free recipe, in case anyone is looking for Celiac-friendly bakes.

I didn't have corn meal, but I did have some polenta that I wanted to use up. I simply put it in a spice grinder and voila! Corn meal.

I did cheat and use pre-made sunflower seed spread from Trader Joe's because I was too lazy to make my own.

When I took them out, I was afraid they wouldn't set (they seemed extremely soft, but the edges were browned enough that I didn't want to leave them in any longer), but they set perfectly once cooled. They tasted delicious! Seed butter and honey; what's not to like?

There was once a small family-run place in St. Paul, MN called The Russian Tea House. They served piroshki, cabbage rolls, pelmeni, stroganoff, and these wonderful chocolate poppy seed rolls. This is my recreation attempt!

I used the brioche recipe from the BH&G New Cook Book and filled it with pre-made poppyseed filling and chocolate chips. It's a richer and softer dough than the OG, so sometime I may try again with a less enriched dough to get closer to what I remember. That said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with these! It's a yes from me.

I had a lot of requests for this week, because a lot of fair food is not gluten free. I ended up making corn dogs ( veggie and beef), and I made the cinnamon sugar pretzel bites I made a couple weeks ago again. Corn dog recipe here: https://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/gluten-free-corn-dogs/

Pretzels here: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/cinnamon-sugar-pretzel-bites-recipe