Apples feature fairly prominently in The Rules of Love & Grammar. There’s an apple orchard in the town of Dorset, where the story takes place, and all of the local restaurants try to outdo one another with their own versions of apple pie.

When I was growing up in Connecticut, we had a couple of old apple trees in our back yard. The apples that came from those trees were tiny, green, and extremely tart. Against what seemed to be all odds, my mother somehow turned those apples into pies. She would scoop them up from the ground and pluck them from the branches. I have no idea how many apples she had to collect to make one pie, but I’m sure she needed a lot. When the pies baked, the fragrance of apples and cinnamon that filled the kitchen was heavenly. [Read more…]

Here’s a simple recipe that makes great blueberry muffins:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup whole milk
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups fresh blueberries
1 heaping tablespoon sugar (optional, for tops)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Reserve one tablespoon of the mixture to coat the blueberries. In a smaller bowl, combine melted butter, milk, egg, and vanilla, and mix well. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and stir with a spatula or whisk until just blended (the batter can be lumpy). Do not over-mix or your muffins will be too dense. Toss the blueberries with the reserved flour mixture and gently fold the blueberries into the batter.

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Sprinkle tops with additional sugar, if desired. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Cool the muffins for 15 minutes before removing them from the pan.