German Apple Cake

 
As my grandmother once put it, “Judy (my mother) was never the baker.” However there are three things my mother used to bake, and she did those three very very well, German apple cake being one. This may be *Carola’s recipe, but my mother has been making this cake twenty years. When I went up to visit my parents at their new home up in Boston I was excited to see this cake waiting for me. It brought me back to my childhood and made me feel right at home, even through this was my first visit to their new digs. I guess home is really where the food is for me.

This cake is super SUPER easy to make, not overly sweet at all and you can use apples that may not be super fresh. The apples I’ve been using have been sitting in my fridge since I picked them back in September, which may be a little insane but nobody eating the cake has been complaining. I swear these Mutso apples last forever in your fridge. I’d recommend a green apple for this recipe.  You can easily whip this up in under 10 minutes, and then pop it in the oven for an hour. It’s a terrific light breakfast or teatime cake.

*This recipe comes from Carola, a German babysitter who used to take care of my brother and I as wee tots. We’re German too so I consider this a family recipe.

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Sufganiyot aka Jelly Doughnuts

I was first introduced to sufganiyot (the hebrew word for doughnuts) two years ago when a boyfriend invited me to dinner with his aunt and uncle. He failed to mention his whole family would be there, parents, siblings, cousins and both sets of grandparents. I walked into a room of 20 people I had never met already sitting down to Hanukah dinner. Luckily I had baked some driedal shaped sugar cookies so I wasn’t empty handed, but talk about awkwaaaarrd!

Anyway point of the anecdote is his aunt had made these delicious jelly doughnuts, known traditionally as sufganiyot. Fried foods are traditional for Hanukah because of the miracle of the oil burning for eight nights instead of one, and we celebrate by eating many oil rich foods, the most popular being latkes or potato pancakes. I was invited to a Hanukah latke party tonight in Brooklyn and decided to contribute by bringing my own sweet treats to counter the pounds of latke’s my friend Larry would be preparing.

My boyfriend rigged up a jelly injector with a straw and a ziplock bag which ended up working perfectly and we got these fried, filled and powdered in about 20 minutes. Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.

I think Latke Larry had the best reaction to the sufganiyot. (See exhibit A below).

Exhibit A. doughnut delight

And now.. time to make the doughnuts..

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Pumpkin Waffles

I’m going on a camping trip and I’m going to bring: a coat, board games, hiking boots and a waffle iron. (remember that car game?) Any good camper brings their waffle iron right? So what started as a camping trip a turned into a rustic house on a lake trip,  which was fine by me because it meant I could ‘plus one’ my iron.

I packed up all the dry ingredients from home, spices, sugars and the pumpkin to make the execution easier. I still had quite a bit of pumpkin left over from pumpkin cookies and pumpkin ice cream (yes I promise I’ll post!) so I decided pumpkin waffles would be a great way to start a weekend away. Also my boyfriend has a certain obsession with the orange squash. There were many other recipes for waffles that included buttermilk, but to pack buttermilk for a cabin on a lake just seemed silly so I only looked for recipes that did without. Though buttermilk is inexpensive it’s only sold in quart size and whenever I buy I feel obligated to find a use for the rest of it (Red velvet cake is the most popular solution).

After some craigslist searching we found a terrific little house on a lake about 2 hours outside of NYC. I was thrilled and excited to be waking up to this both mornings. (below exhibit A.)

(Exhibit A. Peace and Serenity)

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Sauteed Apple Pancakes

I currently have a bit of an apple ‘infestation’ happening in my fridge. It all started with my annual trip out to Wickham farms for some old fashioned apple picking. I was gone for a week traveling through Iceland and this happened? There must be some seriously unhappy apples because now the #OccupyFridge movement has taken up the entire first shelf of my fridge. (see exhibit A)

Exhibit A

I’m deciding to fight back, one apple at a time. This past Saturday this occurred in the form of sauteed apple pancakes, and victory never tasted so good.
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SimplySlacking

Friends, foodies and loyal Simply Sifted followers,

You may have noticed SimplySifted has been on a brief hiatus or perhaps you think we’re just Simply Slacking. Well it’s a little embarrassing but we’ve been on a bit of a diet. Too many dips in the cream cheese frosting I guess. I (Joanna) have also recently switched jobs complete with a new much longer commute, and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my air conditioning unit so turning on the oven does not turn my home into the Depths of Hades. We hope to get a post up soon and back to our regularly scheduled programming of bringing you along on our culinary expeditions.

Thank you for supporting us and we’ll be back to you all very soon!

Wishing you all sweet and savory days til then.
Joanna & Jessie

At the 4th of July Fireworks, NYC

Blueberry Lemon Scones

In honor of the upcoming Royal Wedding today’s topic is SCONES. My mother is a huge fan of them and often has one with her tea. (which makes us 1/8 English right? perhaps an invitation to the wedding eh Kate?) I was out visiting them one weekend and up early doing my usual pantry/frigeadaire raid when I spotted frozen blueberries, what’s a girl to do? Ideas flew through my head, blueberry muffins, blueberry pancakes, blueberry crumb cake. I did some’ google-ing’ and Baking Bites popped up with this recipe for Lemon Blueberry Scones. I figured this would be easy enough to prepare before my mother woke up Saturday morning. What better gift is there than waking up to the smell of freshly baked buttery scones! Sure to nudge my brother out of the favored child slot even if just for a few hours.

This recipe brings us back to my love of zesting. A microplane or zester is one simple tool even the novice baker can use to add pizazz to a confection. I bought one for my parents and they now regularly make blueberry pancakes w/added lemon zest — you CAN teach an old dog new tricks! If you’ve never had a scone you may be surprised. Scones are NOT supposed to be overly sweet. You’ll notice these call for a scant 1/4 cup of sugar in them which for most baked goods is an extremely small amount. A scone is more of a dry biscuit-y bread to be eaten with tea or clotted cream, perhaps while watching the BBC or perusing Great Expectations. This is no doughnut or cinnamon bun; scones are serious, proper, tight lipped and British! Don’t try giggling around a scone, they would not stand for it. Read the rest of this entry »

Lamb Burger with Feta, Red Onion and Spinach

[After all of Jessie's vegan food options I'm doing a 180 with some delicious burgers! Sorry vegans!]

I went on a date recently with a guy who told me upfront, he doesn’t eat burgers. Actually no ground meat in any form, patties, balls or loaves. Now to each his own, but I love me a good burger. Shake Shack, Burger Joint, and Astoria’s own Bareburger… hand me a juicy patty of meat between two buns with avocado and bbq sauce and mmmm. …I can’t get enough.

Though I live in the Greek food capital of the world, Astoria, I never ate lamb until my visit to Morocco back in early 2010. Lamb is HUGE there. I ate a lot of delicious lamb tagine; slow cooked lamb in apricot and prunes, and alot of dried fruits. I figured I was in Africa, I should eat like the people. But back in the states I still had yet to really cook a lamb dish I enjoyed. I didn’t really have inspiration. On a visit to Meatball Shop last fall, it finally clicked. The ‘daily ball’ that evening was lamb meatballs with feta and spinach. Though I didn’t order it that night the combination stuck in my head.

I decided to go for it, if meatballs worked then why not lamb burgers. So upon inspection of many recipes, I discovered this fairly easy one from Bon Appétit.  Success! I will definitely be bringing this to BBQ’s all this summer. I encourage you to try these out if you’re looking to mix up the usual sirlon burger routine. Delish.

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Hazelnut Crescent Cookies

Every Easter and Christmas our old landlord used to bring us up an assortment of delicious homemade old school bakery cookies. Some of them were dry and not particular good but we appreciated the thought tremendously. These cookies remind me of those powdered greek butter cookies, Kourabiethes, but prepared with ground toasted hazelnuts instead of almond. I still had a large bag of toasted hazelnuts unused from my butternut squash lasagna a few weeks ago and after a late night at work last week I was looking for a stress reliever,  and thought baking of course. I came across this Bon Appetit recipe and was thrilled to see I already had all the ingredients already in my pantry.

Because I have a food processor, making the dough was really a cinch. I prepared it the night before and woke up early to form them into tiny horn shaped crescents. This recipe makes about 40 cookies but make sure you don’t bake two racks at a time. The first time I made these I tried to save time and use the top and bottom rack but sadly ended up burning the bottom batch. After the enthusiasm I received when I brought these into work last week, I knew Monday would mean another batch was needed, preferably 40 cookies this time. So I took my time and baked separately. These will definitely be one of my go-to gift cookies in the future, not too difficult and they impress like no other. A very classy cookie delicious with a tea and a good book. Just make sure you’re not wearing black when you eat them. They cookies  ‘snow’ all over you, like it’s doing outside now!

Refridgerate the Dough at Least 2 hours

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Curry Chicken Salad

A few days ago my boyfriend made an important declaration, “chicken salad is my favorite food, I love chicken salad sandwiches with lettuce tomato and onion, and if I’m feeling naughty.. a slice of provelone.” I’ve never made chicken salad, not being a big fan of mayo I myself am not a huge chicken salad fan. The one caveat to that statement would be curried or curry chicken salad.   I had a taste of curry chicken salad over the summer while planning my father’s surprise party and found it delicious. Chicken salad has been a staple lunch go-to for my mother as long as I can remember, but always the same plain jane chicken salad. I wanted to bring some color to this otherwise mundane luncheon food and this past week’s snow storm finally gave me the opportunity.

I was staying in Stamford, CT and woke up Monday morning to this (see pic below) around 20 inches of snow. Metro-North had canceled train service. I decided to walk to the gym and try to secure myself a three day pass to get some cardio in but alas, they were snowed in as well. I went to my backup plan of spending the day cooking delicious food.

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Happy Hanukah – Butternut Squash Edition

Last night marked the first night of the Jewish festival of lights!! I realized I didn’t have a menorah in my new apartment so I got out a butternut squash, a phillips flathead, and candles. This is what I came up with.

Butternut Square Menorah

Yay for creativity in the kitchen. I also came across a recipe for Butternut Squash Curried Latkes. Yum!! I’ll be working on those later this week. Have a great holiday!