Baked Caramel Apple Fritters

Kimchi-making season. Jisoo wrote this week that in Korea, kimjang — the traditional communal kimchi-making done in late autumn before the ground freezes — is happening in her neighborhood. Her building's apartment association gets together every November to make kimchi for the winter. Three or four women's worth of kimchi, packed into onggi on rooftops and in cellars and back balconies. She is going to join them this year. She will make a big batch. She has asked if I want her to dedicate one jar to me. I said yes. She will label it "Dahee-Stephanie" and keep it in her kitchen and we will eat it together when I come in the spring.

I made my own autumn kimchi this week. Not kimjang scale — I am not a Korean grandmother with four sisters and a rooftop — but a big batch, four heads of cabbage, which is the most I have ever made at once. My small kitchen was taken over. The onggi pots are full. I have leftover paste I am going to use to season a pork shoulder. James kept wandering in and saying, "This is incredible," and wandering out again, unhelpfully. I loved him a lot this week for staying out of my way.

I sent Jisoo a photo of the finished kimchi in the onggi. She sent me a photo of her own kimchi in her own onggi. Same pose. Same angle. The photos side by side on my laptop look almost identical — a jar of red-gold fermenting cabbage on a kitchen counter, somewhere in the world. I saved the pair of photos as the wallpaper on my laptop. I look at it ten times a day.

Karen had a good week. The medication adjustment from last month is holding. She has started going to a Parkinson's support group at the hospital — a dozen people in various stages of the disease, meeting Thursdays. She says she likes them. She says one of the men has stage 4 and is "still hilarious." Karen finding community with other sick people feels important. I am trying not to read it too hard. I am letting her have the group for its own sake.

Work: I was sick this week. A light cold. I worked from the condo with tea and throat lozenges and Zoom and nobody noticed, because this is what work is now. I finished an architecture review document on Friday that I have been drafting since August. I felt good shipping it. It is possible, I realized, to be a Principal-track engineer who shipped a design doc and still feel like I did nothing this week, because the doc does not have the satisfaction of code. This is a thing I am going to have to make peace with if I stay at Amazon.

Dr. Yoon: we talked about Kevin and Lisa and Thanksgiving. I am nervous in the good way. Dr. Yoon said, "You're the host this year?" I said, "No. Karen is hosting. She insisted." Dr. Yoon said, "Karen is hosting with her tremors, a year into diagnosis, with her sons-in-law and future daughters-in-law?" I said, "Yes." Dr. Yoon said, "Karen is a warrior." I said, "You have no idea." We laughed.

The recipe this week is kimchi, again, always. Jisoo's recipe. Four heads of cabbage. I will not share her recipe in full. But I will tell you this: the apple is not optional. The sweetness is what lets the heat land without scorching you. That is, I think, a lesson beyond kimchi. Sweetness is what lets heat land without scorching you. Take that with you into your week.

I kept thinking about what I wrote at the end — that the apple in Jisoo’s kimchi is not optional, that sweetness is what lets the heat land without scorching you. After a week of red paste and fermentation and big feelings about time and distance, I wanted to bake something that honored the apple on its own terms. These baked caramel apple fritters are what came out of that impulse: autumnal and warm, sweet without apology, the kind of thing that fills a small kitchen with a smell that makes the people you love wander in and say, unhelpfully, “This is incredible.”

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 18 min | Total Time: 33 min | Servings: 12 fritters

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 medium apples (Honeycrisp or Granny Smith), peeled, cored, and diced into 1/4-inch pieces
1/2 cup store-bought or homemade caramel sauce, plus more for drizzling
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar, for topping

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 400°F (205°C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly coat with nonstick spray.
Whisk dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and granulated sugar until evenly combined.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, melted butter, and vanilla extract until smooth.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined — a few lumps are fine. Do not overmix. Fold in the diced apples.
Portion and top. Using a 1/4-cup measure or large cookie scoop, drop mounds of batter onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Drizzle each mound with about 1 teaspoon of caramel sauce and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
Bake. Bake for 16–18 minutes, until the fritters are set in the center, golden at the edges, and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Finish and serve. Let cool on the pan for 5 minutes. Drizzle generously with additional caramel sauce before serving. Best eaten warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Baked Caramel Apple Fritters — The Apple Is Not Optional