Apple Fritters and Fall Days
My first memories of apple fritters come from a family trip to the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee when I was about seven years old. Up until then, I’d never had them before but it was obvious that my parents were no strangers as they hunted down one particular restaurant just to partake of the treat, served alongside apple butter for dipping.
Apple lovers seem to hold these little hand held delights in such high regard that their eyes glaze over when talking of them. I’ve had more readers than I can count ask me if I had an apple fritter recipe and so today I’m bringing you my very own recipe for them, one that my husband swears could bring about world peace if I played my cards right and kept the sides of apple butter coming.
Speaking of family trips, around these parts fall is the prime time for family outings. We have festivals galore throughout the south and we’ve been getting a head start on this by going on family “adventures” each weekend. We choose one day to get up early and all pile into the car headed off. We don’t tell the kids where we are going and they love the surprise of not finding out until we get there.
We started this a few weeks back and its done wonders for our sanity as well as our sense of togetherness as a family. What started out as something mainly for the kids has become the one thing we all look forward to the most all week long. So far we’ve gone to a historic mill in Belvedere, Tennessee, a day trip to my Papa Reed’s farm, and this past weekend we really surprised them by taking them to Alabama Adventures, an amusement park in Bessemer, Alabama. I have the next three weekend “adventures” planned but I can’t post them here because my Bradybug reads Southern Plate!
We always took little day trips like this when I was a girl, too. If you can, I hope you’ll take some time off this weekend to do something special with your family. It can be as simple as taking lunch out to the back yard for a picnic versus eating at the table, walking around your neighborhood and seeing how many different varieties of leaves you can find, or just going out for a drive one afternoon. In the hectic pace of 2009, its nice to be able to slow down and savor time spent with family like folks did in the old days. I promise you that the simplest of outings will be remembered for lifetimes to come.
How ’bout them fritters?
You’ll need: Milk, brown sugar, apples, eggs, melted margarine, cinnamon, and self rising flour.
Before you mix up your batter, pour about 1/2 inch of oil into a skillet and put it on medium heat on your stove eye so it will be ready to fry in.
In a medium sized bowl, place your flour, sugar, and cinnamon.
Stir that up well, breaking up any sugar lumps as you go.
Now you know if any of those lumps are really stubborn, its bad luck not to eat them. 
In fact, I think it should be considered bad luck not to eat a pinch of brown sugar every time you cook with it.
add in your milk and melted margarine
Add in eggs
Stir that up good.
Peel and dice up your apples.
Toss that into your batter.
Until it looks like this.
Now you’re ready to go!
Drop batter by spoonfuls into hot oil.
I use a big spoon that holds about 1/8 of a cup but feel free to make these as large or as small as you like.
After they get browned on one side, turn them over to brown on the other.
Place the on a paper towel lined plate.
If you like, you can roll some in confectioner’s sugar or just sprinkle confectioner’s sugar over them. I put some in a pie plate and roll them a bit but I usually only do this with half of them since we can never decide which we like best!
The cool thing about doing half in sugar and half plain is that you have to eat at least one of each!
See? I work on these angles for y’all!
Here are my little sugared fritters
and get a gander at these unpowdered ones.
See how hard it is to choose?
This recipe makes about two dozen and you’ll notice that several of those didn’t make it to this photograph.
These mysterious hands started snatching them off the platter on the way and I heard choruses of “yummm” as a result.
I did volunteer to take a bite of one so y’all could see all the chunks of apple inside.
These are so moist and delicious!
And then I thought I wouldn’t be doing y’all right unless I showed you what it looked like with a little apple butter slathered on.
~sighs heavily~ Oh the things I do just for you.
~gobbles up the fritter dutifully with a twinkle in her eye~
Yummm!
Ingredients
- 2 cups apples, peeled and diced
- 2 cups self rising flour
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 3 Tbsp. melted butter
- 1 tsp cinnamon
Instructions
- Mix flour, sugar, and cinnamon together using a fork to break up any lumps.
- Add in milk, melted margarine, and eggs. Stir well to combine.
- Peel and dice apples, add to batter, stirring in.
- Drop by 1/8 cup fulls into hot oil and turn to allow to brown on both sides.
- Drain on paper towel lined plate. Dust with confectioner’s sugar, if desired.
- Serve with apple butter.
Print This Recipe
To get my recipe for crock pot apple butter, click here.
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Sidenote to anyone who might get a cold this year:
I am just finishing off the first good cold of the season and thought I’d share a little tidbit with you that our family Doctor had us try when our oldest was just a baby. We have one of those great common sense doctors who shares all sorts of little tidbits for care beyond prescriptions and such.
You know how little noses get all raw when a cold comes on? Sore and red, you feel so sorry for the little guys! My doctor said to take some plain old chapstick…
Break off a bit like this and warm it between your fingers. Then smear it around your little ones (or yours!) sore nose and you’ll feel instant relief. This also helps heal the soreness and prevent more from happening. I use it on my kids as soon as they start getting colds and such, it’s a great preventative! Hopefully you won’t need this anytime soon but I thought I’d share this little common sense remedy that has saved a lot of discomfort in my house!
Whatever you are, be a good one.
~Abraham Lincoln. Submit your quote here.
Me and my younguns at Alabama Adventures.
My Three
Live in my area?
Don’t miss the big Southern Plate cooking show at the University of North Alabama on September 30th!
Click here to watch the commercial and buy tickets!
Posted by Christy Jordan
on Sep 30 2009. Filed under Breads, Breakfast, Dessert.
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those look yummy!!! you have a wonderful website :0)
So wish I would have known you were going to AA! Would love to have met up with you to personally tell you how much I LOVE your website and enjoy spending HOURS looking at the recipes!!!
What kind of oil should I fry them in?
You must have gone to the Aplle Barn. Yum love that place!
That should have been Apple Barn.
Gotta get busy and make some apple fritters and ‘dippin’ sauce’ (as in apple butter) ! Look how much Brady & Katy Rose have grown in the past year !!
You & Ricky…not so much !!! Gotta go and start peeling some apples…..
I’m guessing those would be equally delicious rolled in cinnamon sugar. Or drizzled with powdered sugar icing. I’ve just gained 5 pounds thinking about it! I wonder if there’s any way to make a baked version that would be yummy but healthier?
girl, where did you get those adorable leaf-shaped jadeite little doohickeys your apple butter is in? precious! also a little note on the chapstick thing, we have done that for years. be sure you grab the black tube and not one of the mentholated ones. I did that by accident one time and mercy! talk about burning- it will set you free, like mama used to say. it’s also pretty good for cuticles too….:o)
My oh my, these look amazing. I am actually on my way to the local apple orchard to get apples to can applesauce and apple butter. I’ve made you apple dapple cake a few times now and loved it. I am anxious to try the apple fritters. I just got a squeezo machine from ebay and hopefully it will make preparing the apples a breeze. That’s what I keep reading anyway. You just can’t beat home canned food. I just finished canning pears and thruought the summer canned cherry jelly (from my cherry tree), strawberry jam, blueberry jam, and peach jam. Now I just need that recipe of your mothers for her homemade sourdough bread. Love you Christi.
Just in time for Apple season to get into full swing up here in Michigan! ONE thing up here that makes me happy (and not miss home so much) is that there are cider mills that serve hot cider and doughnuts all over the place. I must say that they do their apples proud up here! Every once in a while, you’ll find a fritter, too. That’s when I know that the baker “ain’t from around here!”
Hey, Christy, if you want to really get powdered sugar all over the sugar fritters, grab you a paper bag (or ziploc if you’re being tidy ) and fill it with your powdered sugar and shake those nice hot fritters like crazy! I’m imagining a nice little sugar-dance to go along with the shake. Yummmm! I’m going to make up some of those lovely fritters THIS weekend!
Wonder if anyone has tried these with a light glaze like one would find on a Krispy Kreme doughnut? I have purchased them that way and they are goooood!
I wonder why my scale keeps lying to me lately……..oh well I just make some Apple Fritters to ‘share’ ;0) Awesome looking yummies!~!
We love the Apple Barn in Pigeon Forge TN! Our family makes the trip at least twice a year. I’ve bought the apple fritter mix that they sell in the store before, but it never turns out right. Your recipe is so much better and from the pics they look a lot better than mine. I’m going to try your version the next time I make them. Thanks!
I made these last year when you first posted the recipe and they were soooooo good. I was just telling hubby about your apple butter recipe yesterday and it is so good to see it here close at hand so I can grab it and run with it.
Thanks for sharing! We love all things apple!
Yep! I was thinking Apple Barn too! We were just there a couple of months ago and it was SO good! We are going back in November. I just adore the mountains in the Fall!
I haven’t had these in 30 years. A trip to the apple orchard was something my kids looked forward to as the first sign of Fall. We brought home a bushel of apples, maybe 2, and proceedded to make applesauce and apple fritters. We also rolled our fritters in cinnamon-sugar. Oh man. I gotta have one now. Thanks Christy for a great memory and recipe.
Ooops! I forgot to mention. We didn’t chop apples, we cored and sliced them. Put a slice on a fork and dip into fritter batter, then gently ease them into your frying oil. Yummo!!!
Is that an iron skillet you are using, Sweetface.?????
You mean there’s another kind of skillet?????
Wow, learn som’n new every day.
Ahhhh, the Apple Barn…We used to have family who lived in Gatlinburg (he was in charge of Sugarlands). Trips to the Apple Barn were always a treat. Another fond memory, is that we stopped there to buy an apple stack cake for my mother-in-law. Mother was born and raised in the hills of Kentucky. Apple stack cake was a strong, fond memory for her. The Apple Barn used to (and may still) make a pretty good stack cake. We were on our way from our home in Marietta, GA to visit her (and the rest of my husband’s family) in Michigan so we stopped at the Apple Barn and got her one of their cakes. You’d have thought we’d brought her solid gold. It was only a couple of years after that she passed on. SO glad we bought that cake!
Another idea for a sore nose during cold season……Carmex. It sounds gross but I swear it works. I just put some on the outside of my nose. There is something about the smell of Carmex that also helps open up my sinuses so I can breath. We keep 2 containers in the medicine cabinet…one marked nose and one marked lips. LOL!
If I have a really bad cold, before I go to bed I will put Vick’s Vapor Rub on the bottom of my feet and put on a pair of sock. Again, I know it sounds gross but I swear it works.
[...] Apple Fritters [...]
Christy, I have a question I didn’t see addressed here. I made your fritters the other day and they were awesome, of course. However, what should be done with leftovers? We couldn’t eat them all in the same day, so that evening I put the rest in a ziploc bag. They were ruined the next day. The powdered sugar liquified and the fritters were gooey and yucky-looking. No one would touch them, and they went into the garbage. I assume the moisture in the apples caused this. What should I have done? Thanks for your help!
Well you should have eaten more! KIDDING! lol Couldn’t resist. teehee.
Good question! I always just make them early in the day or make sure we have enough folks around to eat them. Like banana pudding (in my personal opinion) its just best the first day, I’m afraid.
However, if I were going to save some, I’d put them on a plate and cover loosely with foil. I think they’d keep better that way than in a plastic bag. Another thing that would help is if you just dusted the ones you were sure you’d eat that day with the sugar and left the others plain. They could be easily frozen and then reheated in the oven to have a pretty good texture the second go around
hope this helps!
CJ
We live about an hour from Pigeon Forge so we go there often. The Apple Barn is delicious and worth stopping by everytime you are there! But, there is a small orchard that operates in Newport (which is a back way into Gatlinburg for us) called “Carvers.” It is family run and has the most amazing fritters! We love going there every fall and even during the summer months when they have homegrown produce to offer! Their shelves are lined with jars of homemade relish, butters, and jellies. It is a must see and it also benefits local farmers!
Hi Christy! Made your apple butter one day last week. This morning I had to make the apple fritters which was the entire reason I made the apple butter !! They looked just like yours and that first bite was heaven!! Thank you so much for sharing that delicious recipe which is going in my permanent recipe file!!!
Sheri Armour
I have to agree with Allison – Carver’s Orchard is the best! We ate at the restaurant there where the meals are served with their apple cider, fritters and apple butter. Heaven! I ran over and bought a jar of the apple butter as soon as I got out of the restaurant and plan on making fritters soon.
[...] yummy! Apple Fritters and Fall Days | Southern Plate __________________ Tami Proverbs 3:5 My Work and My Blog Faith Blog updated 1/4/11 Next goal- [...]
I have been looking for a strawberry fritter receipe. I wonder if I could just substitute strawberries for apples…
I have always loved apple fritters and buy them at the doughnut shop but not anymore, thanks soooooo much.
I love making Apple fritter’s! Fall is my most favorite time of the year. I am for sure going to make me up a batch of these little gems!
I have a Pumpkin fritter recipe that is to die for!!
Yummy, the pumpkin fritters sound wonderful!
these look so good – I’ll just have to try them -
Lark why don’t you share your pumpkin fritter recipe
i admit that i have never, ever had one, but i agree with Jean in n.c. , they sound good with a light glaze on them like Krispy Cream.
I just brought back some apples from the Asheville NC farmers market (I live in TN) and was wondering what I was going to do with all of them. Now I’m going to
make your fritters for my ladies on bunco night! Can’t wait to taste them. Just a tip
if you go to the farmers market in Asheville…there is a great restaurant called the Moose Cafe there that I ate at, and they serve biscuits and apple butter with every meal..yum.
I made these a few nights ago and everyone is begging for more.
I’ve never chopped the apples that small. I always sliced them, dipped them in the batter and dropped them in the fryer. So many ways to serve them. Ever tried Cinnamon and Sugar, my favorite. I’ve had chocolate, strawberry preserves, grape jelly or jam, honey, syrup, regular white sugar. And when served plain, put several on a plate with a hunk of cheddar cheese. Now I’m going to try apple butter. Thanks for the fabulous recipes.
Hi Christy, Well, you know I just had to comment on this recipe since I happen to live in the Smoky Mountains and know just the restaurant you’re talking about. I’ve loved apple fritters for years and have made them myself twice so far this year and also gone to that restaurant. They sell the best apple butter you can find and it reminds me so much of what my grandmother made on her farm when I was a child. I sure hope while you were here you also tried some of their fabulous fried apple pies. It just wouldn’t be Fall here in the Smokies without apple fritters, fried apple pies and apple butter. Yum!!!
[...] Southern Plate waxes nostalgic about apple fritters. They’re sweet, deep fried and taste of apples. What’s not to [...]