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 drove up to visit my parents at their new home  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 me 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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Pumpkin Bread – Mini Post #4

I made this bread using half pumpkin and half pureed sweet potato because it was what I had on hand.  This moist and sweet quick bread was delicious.  I’m sure it would be equally good with all pumpkin or with another winter squash substituted (I’ve also made breads with acorn and butternut squash). In my cookbook this recipe was labeled as “spiced” pumpkin bread, and while I thought the amount of spice was perfect I’d recommend increasing the spices if you want something with a more pronounced spice flavor.

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Cornmeal Cranberry Scones – Mini Post #1

Last week I started a new job where I’ll only be working 3 days per week.  In my additional free time I plan to do volunteer work, study for the GREs, and attempt some more challenging baking projects like croissants or homemade pretzels.  I’m looking forward to devoting more time to the blog.  Before I kick off what should be a banner year of holiday baking, I wanted to share some of the recipes that I’ve made over the past few months,  but haven’t gotten around to writing about.  For the next week I’ll put up a mini post each day or so with a picture, recipe, and a sentence or two with notes.

Cranberry Cornmeal Scones

Pat’s great aunt clipped this recipe for me from the newspaper.  It’s from Ocean Spray and as I was mixing the ingredients together I suspected the scones might be a bit dry.  I made a few on-the-fly changes and  I’ve posted my modified version below and highly recommend it.  They’re easy to make and have a pleasantly moist and crumbly texture.  Like all scones they’re best fresh from the oven, but the next day they still tasted quite good after warming in the microwave for 20 seconds.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup 12 tbsp. (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter
2/3 cup milk 2/3 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup 1 cup dried cranberries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400º F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt in medium bowl and stir until mixed. Cut butter into flour mixture with a pastry blender until coarse crumbs form. Add cream and stir with fork just until a sticky dough forms. Gently stir dried cranberries into dough.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead gently about 10 times.  At first the dough will be quite crumbly, but it will come together as you need it.  Pat dough into a ½-inch thick circle.  Cut to dough into 8 triangles like a pizza.

Arrange triangles 1 inch apart on baking sheet.  Brush with an egg and sprinkle with a coarse sugar.
Bake 14 to 18 minutes or until golden brown.   (Mine took 18 minutes to cook). Serve warm or at room temperature.

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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Cinnamon Chip Muffins

Recently we had a new member join our team at work.  I really wanted to do something nice to welcome her and thought a basket of muffins had the perfect “welcome to the neighborhood” vibe.  The muffins also had the added benefits that they only used ingredients that I already had in the house and could be thrown together in 20 minutes, which made them ideal considering I had to bake them on a night I got home from work at 9 pm.

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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 »

Upside-Down Caramel Apple Muffins

Last weekend a few friends and I trekked out to Wickham’s Fruit Farm on the North Fork of Long Island. The weather was beyond amazing and the apple picking was superb.

I have been picking apples at Wickham’s Fruit Farm for the past few years. The orchard has a fleet of tractor wagons that bring you out to the latest crop of apples. Mr. Wickham is there every year, for every wagon, to explain how to properly pick them and where the best fruit is. It’s one of my favorite fall traditions and no trip to LI in October is complete with out some fresh apples and hot cider donuts. I always pick the Mutsu apples for baking, Mr. Wickham recommends them because they aren’t overly sweet and their ability to maintain their shape in a pie. We took back two huge bags and they have been sitting in my kitchen for the last week anticipating their purpose in life. Luckily while scanning through NYTimes.com this recipe for Upside Down Caramel Apple Muffins caught my eye.  I haven’t had much experience with upside down desserts. I made a apple tart tatin a few years ago with great success and a upside down pineapple cake in a coffee can once at boy scouts with my brother, but that pretty much sums it up. I had everything I needed already at home except for the sour cream so I picked that up, but in general this recipe is great because it doesn’t call for any unusual ingredients.

When I first saw the finished product I was worried because the apples didn’t seem to stick and the muffin batter didn’t meld with the slices, it was more like an apple cake with slices on top. But after I served them at work flipped, they got rave reviews from all the happy taste testers.

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Cornflake Crusted French Toast

Portland was a great breakfast town.  There were restaurants that had sit down breakfast everywhere.  We read this in our guidebook before the trip and were excited since last summer we went to Washington, D.C. for vacation and could only find bagels, doughnuts, or crepes.  I’ve got nothing against bagels, but if you want french toast or pancakes they don’t really cut it.  I’ve been hearing about corn flake crusted french toast for awhile, and finally tried it at Mother’s Bistro and Bar.  Unsurprisingly it’s really good.  The crunch of the cereal provides a nice contrast to the softness of the bread. Read the rest of this entry »