If you were at the Smiths Falls YIG (Your Independent Grocer) last week, and saw a masked woman pawing through every apple bin, looking for perfect specimens in every colour of the rainbow, that was me. I apologize for getting my germs over every apple!

I realize that August is a bit early to start posting about fall apples, but Rosh Hashanah is in two weeks and we’ve got to get our ass in gear. I’m not a fan of traditional honey cake. I find it too cloyingly sweet. I wanted to find a way of incorporating both apples and honey into a dessert.

Apples and honey go together on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), like cookies and milk, every other day of the year! We dip apples in honey to symbolizes our wishes for a sweet year for family, friends and all the Jewish people. While this explanation makes sense, I have often wondered why specifically apples and honey?  Why not figs dipped into date syrup?

In researching this question, the interpretation I discovered on the website torah.org, resonated quite strongly with me.Their insight regarding the apple part of the equation, is explained this way:
“On most fruit trees the leaves appear before the fruit, thus providing a protective cover for the young fruit. The apple, however, makes a preemptive move by appearing before the leaves. The Jewish people are compared to an apple because we are willing to live out our Jewish lives even if this seems to leave us unprotected. “

The choice of honey was brilliantly explained with this insight:
“A bee can inflict pain by its sting, yet it also produces delicious honey.  Life has this same duality of potential. We pray that our choices will result in a sweet year.”

And so apples and honey it is again, this year on my holiday table.

You’ll need 5 different varieties of apples if you want to make the Rainbow/Ombre effect I produced here. You’ll need two of each kind of apple. Look for dark red apples, pink apples, red-orange apples, yellow apples and green apples. A very sharp paring knife and about 20 minutes of concentration and you will be ready to assemble.

I used my favourite galette dough as the base. Impossibly flaky and delicious it is a versatile dough. I mixed some ground almonds, honey, egg and flour to make a honey paste (frangipane) as the base for the apples. The dough is folded up around the apples in a very casual way. Nothing precious here. Sprinkle it all with some cinnamon sugar and then into a hot oven.

The colours do fade a bit when baked, but the taste is so delicious. I brushed it with a honey glaze when it was still warm, for extra shine.

A scoop of vanilla ice cream would be very welcome.

Or just plain with a cup of coffee or tea.