Apple Coffee Cake

October break is here, and with it, a blog post for the first time in a while cause, you know, life.

In the USA, October break means nothing. There, children are pushed out of public schools for three months of summer to wreak havoc, then once they have finally forgotten everything their teachers laboured to insert into their resistant craniums, they are locked back inside the institution's doors for the remainder of the year (apart from two weeks at Christmas and a week in spring). Meanwhile, here in Britain one must always check one's calendar to see if school is on that day, for the schools don't open their doors for such significant cultural events as the following:

Christmas
Easter
Autumn*
February*
and...the ever significant, can't ever miss it:
Bank holiday

I say bank holiday, singular, but it feels like there are dozens of the bastards, usually falling on Mondays, which usually have no great significance other than to say "feck it, let's have a day off, just to mess with the parents looking forward to Monday, shall we?"

The consequence of this schedule is that you'll be rolling along, enjoying your little school routine of drop-offs, pick-ups, working when they are at school, when all of a sudden the school refuses to take them for a day, a week, or, if you're really lucky, the school announces that technically the inner walls aren't attached to the outer walls and the roof isn't technically attached to the walls either so they have to close indefinitely.

I really, really hate it when they do that last one, by the way.

So here we are, celebrating autumn. And Autumn means apples, apples stolen in the black of night from the local angry farmer who came after us with his pitchfork.** They taste best poached, but a close second is to make apple coffee cake. At this point, Americans all say "oooh- coffee cake! and Brits all say "apple and coffee? In a cake? uh...<tentative bite> wow, I can't taste the coffee at all!" That's because it is a cake meant to be consumed with coffee, it doesn't actually contain any. I had been told it was a German thing to call it coffee cake, then I spoke to my German colleagues all chill about "coffee cake" and how it doesn't have any coffee in it and they stared in that special, direct, mean-what-they-say that their nation has perfected and said "no, we do not call that coffee cake in Germany" so I guess it's just another silly Americanism.


You know how a lot of the time I take photos of all the steps along the way? Screw that, here are some apples on some batter that I made. Incidentally, one of the great things about having kids is that first thing in the morning you can send them to the shops for ingredients.

Son, I couldn't have made this without you. 

I sliced the apples instead of roughly chopping them cause I felt fancy, but I didn't make them uniform, because I lack both the precision and the will to do that. 

This is the struesel topping I made in the food processor. I should have made more. Too much topping is always better than too little.

Here is the evidence that I should have made more - you can never have too much struesel on coffee cake.

unbaked

Baked. Yes, I know I missed a spot.

And here is the final, somewhat thin for coffee cake, product, right before I stuck it in the freezer with all of its attractive brothers and sisters (as well as the ugly brother who has the same mother and father but somehow lost out on the looks lottery) so that I can better transport the goods to a mystery location tomorrow. And so I didn't shove all the cake in my face immediately, because these guys are like Pringles. 

Soft cake base, gooey, tart apple middle, and crunchy top

So wish me luck over the next week as I try to master the fine details of financial reporting (INCLUDING the ever exciting group reports pro formas) while at the same time keeping three children fed, clothed, and entertained with all kinds of educational activities. 

HA HA HA HA!!

Please pass me the cake now.

I can't find a handy link for the recipe, so forgive me if I leave that typing for another day. Alternatively, open up a copy of Joy of Cooking and make their Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Apple topping, using yogurt instead of sour cream and Struesel I. 

*They don't shut for the entirety of Autumn of February, as that would be silly. Instead each time children are given a week off. Plus, usually, a random Monday added on just to mess with you. 

**the apples weren't actually stolen - my colleague has an apple tree and gifted them to me. 

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Ugh. It has just been a lacklustre week, I'm afraid. No one thing in particular, just a general build-up of bleurgh and hmph, topped with meh, with not nearly enough silly animal videos appearing on my Facebook news feed.

At least there's always www.cakewrecks.com ...

And cookies. But only if you make them yourself.

Often when I am wandering the aisles of my local supermarket, my eye is caught by little brown bags near the tills. Each contains 5 cookies, and they are usually on sale for just £1. Most of the time, I manage to stop myself from buying the bags by simply saying to myself if I really want cookies I should spend the time and effort making them myself. The flip side of this, of course, is that I then don't have just five cookies, I have LOTS AND LOTS OF COOKIES!!!

My general favourite cookie is a classic oatmeal raisin cookie. I guess this is mainly because it is so hard to go wrong with them - the oats pretty much guarantee they will be chewy, and they make you feel you are somehow being wholesome by eating them, what with all those whole grain oats and dried fruit. Of course, that is all a lie, as you'll know as soon as you start to make them (news flash: cookies are never healthy) but I like to pretend.

Last time I made these I used dark muscovado sugar and they were pretty darned good. This time, I only had dark brown sugar (yes, they are different - the former is less processed so still retains some of the goodness of molasses) and they were good, just not as good.

I thought I'd try using my food processor to mix the cookies. I started with the brown sugar and butter.

So yeah, the food processor didn't work so well on this one. I was kind of annoyed as it meant another bowl to wash, but it just wasn't working, even with the butter at room temperature for once. In a bowl was just fine - thankfully the baby had fallen asleep so I had use of both hands, always a plus.

Then in went some caster sugar, two eggs, and some vanilla.

Until it was a gloopy, happy mixture.

In my scales' measuring bowl I put flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Both my children asked, when trying the cookies, "is that cinnamon I taste?" It was.

I made sure to mix all those dry ingredients together to distribute all the spices and raising agents before adding it to the big mix. No one wants a spice free cookie. NO ONE.

Then all that got mixed up.

And then last but not least, in went my oats and raisins. The bigger the better for your rolled oats here, but quick oats will work fine too. And sultanas instead of raisins are satisfactory. Any dried fruit, really. One of my friends once just used one big measurement of muesli instead of mixing oats and raisins and said they were the best oatmeal cookies she'd ever made, so there's that idea too.

The final mix. Sad to think that our kids will never get to make mix tapes for their friends and/or romantic interests.

Then I used two spoons to plop lumps of the mixture onto lined trays.

My daughter regularly asked me if I was done with the spoons yet.

Then after 8 minutes in the oven, out they came. I like them to look brown at the edges and just slightly underdone in the middle, as they will cook a bit more as they cool. Muscovado sugar also helps prevent them drying better than dark brown sugar does.

Nestled in their tin. Looks like I've got more than five...now who wants a cookie? Don't they look good for you?

Oatmeal Cookies - adapted from Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups plain flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup butter 
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup raisins
• 3 1/2 cups rolled whole oats

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F/180C.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg into a mixing bowl and set aside.
3. Mix butter and brown sugar. Add caster sugar, vanilla, and eggs and mix until well blended.
4. Sift (yes, again!) flour mixture into butter mixture and mix well.
5. Fold in raisins (or chocolate chips or chocolate covered raisins) and oats.
6. Spoon 1.5 inch balls onto non-stick cookie sheet.
7. Bake at 350°F for 6-9 minutes, rotating half way through baking. They will look slightly underdone in the middle but brown at the edges and will continue cooking while they cool.

Rich Rolled Lemon Sugar Cookies

Oooh...only a few days until Christmas, and we all know what that means...

COOKIES!!!

Vast quantities of cookies, of an insane number of variations, moment on your lips, lifetime on your hips cookies. They might be out of a tin, or removed from a posh box, or shaken out of a bag, or...

You will decide that you want to fill your house/apartment/flat/strange foreign home with the smell of sugar, butter, and eating-your-troubles-away goodness by BAKING THEM YOURSELF. And, since it's Christmas and all, you'll decide you want to use fun shapes too.

Now your first instinct may be to make gingerbread. I usually do, and to tell the truth I am usually disappointed as gingerbread is never really as good as ginger snaps, is it? It isn't spicy or chewy enough, and though the smell is good, I just never feel the cookies themselves stand well enough on their own. Lemon icing for decorating helps, but really, why not just make ginger snaps instead and save your fancy cutters for these.

These are sugar cookies, but better than just regular ones. These are rich rolled cookies, adapted from Joy of Cooking. Speaking of that book, mine is looking rather sad, don't you think?

You can just about make out the big "Joy" in the middle of the spine there. Yes, it's seen a lot of use over the years, so I decided that since I'm missing a few pages I'd get a fresh copy as a back-up. Well, turns out my version, the angicised version that first came out in 1946 (!!) is out of print. Thankfully, the internet (and with the help of the family who write it and who is very active on facebook) I was able to track down a used copy without too much trouble. It turns out quite a few recipes are different from in the American edition, so I'll be careful not to just lazily copy and paste stuff in the future.

But this recipe looks the same in both. It's the recipe I used as a child, and a recipe that I convinced a few of my friends' families to use as well, as they all had a copy of this cookbook on their shelves too but hadn't known how good this recipe is.  However, I do have one small alteration: lemon zest. Lemon zest makes lots of recipes better, and this is no exception. Most people get tired of plain vanilla cookies this time of year, so adding the lemon lifts them a little and makes everyone who tastes them feel clever, because then they get to say "oooh...this isn't just plain vanilla, is that LEMON, by any chance?" and you can say, "yes, you're right!" and they can smile and feel smug about their superior tastebuds.  

Works every time, I tell you.

The list of ingredients is relatively short: butter, sugar, egg, baking powder, salt, vanilla, flour, and lemon.

First, I took the butter and put it in a bowl and bashed it for a while. I did this because, as usual, I didn't remember to take my butter out of the fridge in advance to get it to room temperature.  Whenever I do remember, I end up having some domestic catastrophe which means I don't get to bake and I've left the butter out and let it get mushy for no reason. Or I forget I remembered to leave it out and take butter out of the fridge anyway. So yeah, I generally try to just keep it in the fridge and take my aggression out on it once it's in the bowl. 

The recipe calls for 225 grams of butter. That may seem like an odd amount until you realize that two American sticks of butter, or one cup of butter, is 225-230 grams. You figure these things out when you read a lot of converted recipes.

Once I bashed it a bit I added some sugar and bash it some more. You could use an electric mixer here, but I don't. Less noisy this way.

Here I've pretty much creamed it together. You'll understand why I say "pretty much" when you see a photo later on.

Then I added the zest of a lemon.

And a happy egg. My egg lady also raises turkeys and was a bit dazed at the market today. Apparently she didn't go to bed last night thanks to all the Christmas turkey orders.  At her age, you wouldn't think she'd be able to poulet off!

Sorry.  Ahem.   

Yes, an egg.

Then in went vanilla.

This got stirred up and looked like a curdled mess so I started checking the recipe to make sure I was doing it right.

Flour, salt, and baking powder will make it better.

So then I stirred it together, but it was difficult as I was holding a baby. He was in a grabbing mood, so I passed him to my husband and said "just take him for literally one minute while I finish stirring the dough!"  True to my word, I quickly finished mixing the dough and threw the mix into the fridge without taking a photo.

It looked like sugar cookie dough.

Then, the next day (yes, it was meant to be an hour or so later, but it was the next day instead) I took it out, put it on some parchment, and bashed it with a rolling pin to flatten it.  See those white spots here and there? That's cause I didn't cream the butter and sugar well enough. I wouldn't win a baking competition, but that just means I don't have to give any cookies to a snooty judge who thinks that's important. THEY'LL STILL TASTE FINE.

Then I roll it to about as thick as I like my cookies...I'm guessing about a 1/4 inch?  I put parchment paper on top while I'm rolling them too.

Then my daughter took a photo while I growled in my mom cardigan.

These are the shapes we selected from my collection. I should probably get some more.

My daughter avoided photographing my head. I felt like the nanny in Muppet Babies.

Then we simply pressed them out.

And put them on my recycled parchment (I think I made ginger snaps but used the other side of the paper for them).

Then I baked them until they were just getting the tiniest, teeniest, eensie-weensiest bit brown at the edges, about 7 minutes. This meant they still are a bit chewy in the middle.

Never knowingly overbaked, that's my motto.

I sometimes use a quick lemon icing for these, but on this occasion I just stacked them and gave them away to teachers and neighbours. Apart from the quality control cookies, of course. One has to maintain standards.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Lemon Rich Rolled Sugar Biscuits adapted from Joy of Cooking ISBN 0684851466

Beat until well blended

225 unsalted butter, softened 

120g caster sugar

Add and mix until well combined

zest 1 lemon

1 egg

1/4 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Stir in until well blended and smooth

325g plain flour

Divide dough in half and place each half between large sheets of greaseproof paper.  Refrigerate until firm but not hard, ideally.  

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F.  Remove dough from fridge and roll out dough until it is as thin/thick as you like your cookies. Cut with fun shapes, using tetris skills to minimize dough wastage and re-rolling dough.  Place on parchment covered baking sheets about an inch apart.  If desired, sprinkle lightly with coloured sprinkles. Bake for 6-9 minutes, rotating halfway through baking to ensure even baking, removing from oven when they start to colour at the edges. 

Cool on rack. Except for the one you "accidentally" broke on the way to the rack.  Just eat that one.

Banana Bread

Before I had kids, I would occasionally phone work before I headed out the door and ask them to turn on the oven to 180C.  Roughly fifteen minutes of brisk walking later, I'd carry a 2lb baking tin full of banana bread batter into the staff room and pop it in the hot oven so that by the time morning tea break arrived, the loaf would be ready and the smell of baking would waft through the office. Needless to say, this made many people there happy. Colleagues would leave spotty bananas on my desk, and collections for supplies were made in my name. This somewhat confused the late night workers, as all the crumbs had disappeared by the time they arrived.

Pretty much everyone I know who bakes has made banana bread at some point in their lives.  It is such a staple comfort food, making you feel thrifty in your refusal to bin brown bananas. My husband eats most things, but he hates bananas, so I do try to make it when he is out of the house, or at least for occasions held elsewhere.  I have had the recipe requested many times, as the loaf ends up fairly light in texture compared to most banana loaves out there, but far be it from me to say this is the best one.  I did it with pecans because I had some I wanted to use up, but I think I prefer walnuts as they give a bit more bite and contrast better with the bread.

I started by putting flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda together.

Then in a different bowl, I put butter and sugar.

I mixed them.  No, I didn't use a mixer, I used a fancy wooden spoon that I got from Williams Sonoma that I love.

Then, rather than adding eggs now, you add the flour.

And you mix it all together.  I use my pastry blender.  I had to go online to get one of these in the UK, as I hunted through all the cookshops within the city boundaries and couldn't one.  That said, baking supplies are a lot easier to find now that the Great British Bake Off has come along.  Apparently stand mixers have seen their sales increase dramatically, and I find it easier to find things like loaf tin liners that had all but disappeared from shop shelves a couple years ago.

I cracked open a couple eggs,

And whisked them with a mini whisk that used to be attached to a hand mixer that died many moons ago.

In went the eggs.

And I mixed them all up to make a fairly stiff batter.

Then I looked at my bananas.  I had wanted to make this a day earlier, but discovered I had no sugar.  I didn't discover this until I had peeled the bananas, though, so they had been sitting out for a while.  The one on the bottom is approaching fermentation quickly.

Mush mush mush. I didn't know until I had kids that mushed bananas could stain clothes.

In goes the banana mush.  Ew.

Um, I wish I could say this looks better, but, uh...

Let's just throw some nuts on, hm?

Oh, uh, I guess just scrape it out and put it somewhere else.

Yes, there looks good.  So yes - a few years ago, several shops stopped stocking these liners, but now...everywhere has them.  They are awfully handy.  Right, so then I stuck this ugly beast in the oven.

And it came out like this!

Hooray!  I don't know whether I prefer it hot out of the oven, or cooled and more cleanly sliced later on with tea.  Best have it both ways, I guess.

Banana Bread from Joy of Cooking

An unusual mixing method produces a tender cakey loaf with
excellent banana flavour.

Have all ingredients ready at room temperature.  Position a rack
at the lower third of the oven.  Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. 
Line a 1.5 litre loaf tin.

Whisk together thoroughly:
185g plain flour
3/4 tsp salt 
1/2 tsp Bic Soda
1/4 tsp baking powder

In a large bowl, beat until light and fluffy:
75g unsalted butter
120g sugar

Cut in the flour mixture until blended and the consistency of
brown sugar.  Gradually mix in 
2 eggs, slightly beaten

Fold in, until just combined:
2 large (or 3 small) very ripe bananas, mashed
60g chopped walnuts

Scrape the batter into the tin and spread evenly.  Bake until
toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. 
Let cool in the tin on a rack for 5-10 minutes before turning
out to cool completely on the rack.