Christmas Apples

 

These are Christmas Apples.  Aren’t they the cutest thing, ever?  Also, known as Lady Apple, Pomme d’Api, Lay’s Finger and Wax Apple, I found these tiny apples in my neighborhood grocery store!  Here’s a picture of them with a normal apple so that you can compare their size:

 

 

The Red Delicious apple in the photo above is a rather smallish apple.  It’s certainly not one of those gigantic Red Delicious Apples!  I’d say it’s about 4″ tall.  So, if you can visualize that, you will note that the Christmas Apples are significantly smaller!  The largest was about 2″ tall!  So cute!

 

 

I’ve never seen them before and intrigued, I had to get them, whether or not they tasted good.  If they weren’t worth eating, I thought to myself, I’d display them for Christmas.  So, here’s what I did:

 

I put them in a silver gravy boat and then started gathering other red and green things to put around them.  So pretty!

 

 

 

On the Specialty Produce website, they describe them as:  “satin-finished pale lime green skin blushed with layered tones of ruby and crimson and nearly invisible white freckles.  Though it is firm to the touch, the flesh of a Lady apple is tender, not crisp.  Its flavor far from tart, rather quietly sweet tart with a succulent but subtle finish.”  Whoever wrote those words should be a food blogger!  Such a great description…

 

 

I bought them before Thanksgiving, so they may be hard to find now.   However, the Specialty Produce website says that they are used to decorate Christmas trees as ornaments and garland and are used in wreaths in both the US and in England.  Also, the website says the historical name, Pomme d’Api, dates back to approximately 700 B.C. in early Rome.  The first reference as a “Lady Apple” was during the French Renaissance around 1628.

I would have bought more, but this is all they had.  I cleaned out the store {grin}!

Tootles,