Bakers Delight *

The best cooking apples, I find, are often not very good to eat out of hand.

But this one looks promising and smells wonderful—a spicy cider aroma—so we'll see.

My lone sample is a yellow apple about half covered with a streaky red blush and dark lenticels. It is a large medium-size fruit, squat but clasically tapered and with no ribbing.

The calyx at the bottom is wide open and you can peer a bit into the apple. There is also a heart-shaped bruise, visible in my photo.

Eating Bakers

Bakers Delight has crisp yellow flesh, medium coarse and light yellow. It is lighter and crisper than many classic cullinary apples such as Duchess of Oldenburg and Calville Blanc. 

The crunch is nonetheless more tender and delicate than that of, say, Honeycrisp or EverCrisp.

Also in contrast to the cooking varieties, Bakers is sweet and flavorful, with floral and spicy notes. There is also some vanilla and chamomile, which turns pineapple-esque in the finish. A bit of honey, too. 

One bite (just one? how?) had some cinnamon.

The sweetness makes it a little tough to tease everying out, but there is a slight savory note that lingers in the finish.

I don't know how this one bakes, but it's not hard to eat, and it's cheering to find a new apple that gives us so much on flavor.

Oh, and it is also a slow-to-no-browning variety.

Bakers Delight is a GoldRush x Sweet 16 cross that ripens in September, brought into the world by the Midwest Apple Improvement Association.

This is an apple club that will let anyone be a member, so it might be worth looking for Bakers at an orchard near you.