CIDER FRAPPE

Finding the Cider Frappe

If you have read any of our apple recipes you probably know that one of my favorite places to be is in an apple orchard during apple season. I like everything about it, especially picking the apples. I wrote about it in Apple Picking Time. It was on one of my weekday retreats to the orchard that I found the cider frappe.

The farm store at my local apple orchard is packed with sweet treats. They have homemade fudge to die for, homemade baked goods of all kinds including cider donuts. There’s homemade bread for a variety of sandwiches made with their own oven baked turkey and ham. They even have homemade ice cream. Once I go in it’s impossible for me to leave without thousands of calories packed into a small bag, cleverly disguised to look harmless with an apple on the front.

A newly added taste treat delight

One afternoon while in the farm store I happened to glance at the daily take-out menu while I was checking out some sweet treats. There was an ice cream beverage called a cider frappe. I am a frappe lover so I asked for the scoop on the cider frappe (pun intended 😉).

I was the only customer there and the gal at the counter was one of the family members that owned and lived on the farm. She told me it was something they were trying out and said she would whip one up and share it with me if I wanted to try it. Oh yes please!

She picked up a bottle of their fresh pressed cider, poured some into the mixing cup, then she scooped up some vanilla ice cream, put that in too and turned the machine on. In moments she handed me this creamy, frothy cider delicacy. OMG! Dangerously good.

Cider Stories

The cider I buy at my local orchard is unpasteurized. You can only buy unpasteurized cider when you are buying directly from the farm.

All distributed cider has to be pasteurized which means it has been heated to kill bacteria. There is not a big difference. But when you are buying cider at a grocery store if it has added preservatives what happened to me will not happen to you. Some may be disappointed 🤗.

A Halloween surprise

For many years I had a big Halloween party for all the neighborhood kids. As the crowd of kids grew over the years we tried to plan new spooky and fun stuff so our older kids would keep coming. It took a lot of the month to prepare for our annual event and I loved it.

While at the orchard picking some apples I decided I would cross one chore off the list and bought a couple of gallons of their unpasteurized cider for the party. I had a shed and planned on keeping the cider in there. It was October and there was more than a little nip in the air so I thought that it would keep well in that cold temperature.

On the day of the party I went to get the two gallon jugs of cider out of the shed and found them swelled up like balloons ready to pop. Yup, I had 2 gallons of fermented hard cider!

The kids didn’t have cider at the party that year, but I had a neighbor whose alcohol of choice was hard cider. Their loss was his gain. And I am absolutely sure Rocky appreciated it more than the kids would have otherwise. 🍺

Real cider’s seasonal sweetness

Here’s an interesting fact I learned while hanging out in apple orchards.

Because I buy cider fresh from the farm during all of the apple harvest season I’ve found that cider tastes sweeter toward the end of the season and I asked why. Cider is sweeter at the the end of the season because those apple varieties that ripen last are sweeter than those that ripen at the beginning of the season!

Such a simple answer. I wish there were more of those in life.

Nothing is easier than making your own Cider Frappe

Here’s the making of my first cider frappe of the year

This sweet treat has some redeeming value. It is not a low calorie drink, but it has a heck of a lot of vitamins and minerals. Check out our nutritional information on the recipe card. It’s almost a health drink 😋. Almost.

Recipe

Use only the real thing

Making your cider frappe from anything other than the real thing is not going to give you the special fresh bite that gives this drink it’s unique character.

In season fresh apple cider – as much as you want

Ice cream – as much as you want

You really can’t go wrong. You can make your cider frappe mostly ice cream with cider to flavor it or mostly cider with ice cream to make it creamy.

Use vanilla ice cream, caramel swirl, butter rum or any other ice cream that pairs well with apples.

Mix it up

If you have a food processor or a blender you can whip it up in that. If you have an emulsion blender it works great for a single serving or two! You can put the cider and ice cream in a jar with a cover and shake it up and drink it right from the jar. You don’t need to fully emulsify the ice cream, lumps are good! Or mix the cider and ice cream together in a bowl and whip it with a whisk.

Do you know what an emulsion blender is? We have one pictured in BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP. It’s a long handled electric blender on a stick. It’s great for soups, purees and small batches of beverages, like our cider frappe. It’s a fairly inexpensive tool that can come in handy for soups, sauces and mixed beverages.

Other Ideas

Add some cinnamon or nutmeg to the cider or over the top of the frappe

Add a little spiced rum or apple liqueur to the cider before mixing

Instead of a frappe make a cider soda