French Apple Cake

Ahhh, the holidays...that time of year when you strap your children into fast moving vehicles and hope for the best but expect the worst. 

We travelled down to Bristol, where, despite many threats to the contrary, Father Christmas visited and heaped gifts upon our little people. My husband and I didn't fare too badly, gaining two kitchen appliances: a slow cooker and an ice cream maker. I'm afraid neither of them is going to feature here today, as I have not yet opened the manuals on either of them, but I did get another gift that will appear in this post: apples!

A friend of ours gave us a bag of apples from her dad's garden and told us to put them to good use, so I thought it was time to make a recipe I had made once before: French apple cake. Last time I made it, the result was like a mix between bread pudding and cake, with lots and lots of soft apple bound by the cake mixture. So it was with quite a bit of enthusiasm that I got these things together:

There was butter too, but I forgot to put it in the shot. It was kind of scabby looking butter with remnants of toast on it, so maybe it's for the best that it missed out on this group photo. The recipe called for a greased 8 inch round, removable base cake tin. Last time I used a 9 inch springform instead, but this time I thought I'd try my 8 inch tart tin, as it was closer to the recipe's request. The paper was left over from making cookies a couple weeks ago.

Next I peeled and chopped the apples into fairly sizeable chunks. They smelled kind of funny, almost like playdough, but when I tasted a piece it was fine. Weird.

Then into one container went some flour, baking powder, and some salt. This container is meant to be a separator jug for making gravy (an insert goes in the middle), but I don't like things in the kitchen to only have one use, so I'm using it as a general jug too.

Then into another bowl went a couple of eggs. Having children has meant I have not learned to crack eggs one-handed with my left hand while I juggle a child on my right hip.

The instructions said I should whisk the eggs until foamy. I decided this was foamy enough for me.

Then in went sugar.

Which I whisked while the scissors tried to escape. So THAT'S why they are never in the drawer when I look for them...

In went rum and vanilla.  My son said the rum would make the cake rumdiddlyumptious. I think he's been reading too much Roald Dahl lately.

By this time, an expectant crowd had gathered, with cups of tea at the ready.

So in went the flour mix.

Then some melted butter.

Then flour mix...

Then melted butter...(notice a pattern here?)

Then flour mix followed by the apples.

As you can see, the mix was fairly apple heavy.

I poured it into the tin and quickly discovered that, er, there was a bit too much mix put in. Oh well...I just shoved a tray underneath to catch any overflow (I didn't think there would be a huge rise on it as it is mostly apple).

Sure enough, though there was some spillage, it wasn't a massive amount, so the cake came out of the oven looking like this:

The spillage did mean it wasn't easy to remove the cake from the tin. Well, nothing a good dose of icing sugar can't cover up!

Truth be told, I had slightly underdone it in the middle, in spite of my knife check, but no one seemed to mind. It may have been because I used a bit too much apple - the original recipe called for three "very large" apples, so I used 4 medium large apples and hoped that would be right. So if you try this recipe, do have a good dig round in the middle to make sure it's all done - it would be hard to over-cook this baby, really, as it has so much apple in it to keep it from drying out. 

And tomorrow, I might even attempt making some ice cream. My husband took out the manual and told me I need to chill the maker's bowl overnight before we do, so it is sitting in my freezer now. I have a feeling some ice cream would be very nice with a heated slice of French Apple Cake...

MARIE HELENE'S FRENCH APPLE CAKE

recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan, stumbled upon at Kirbie's Cravings

3/4 cup + 1 tbsp all purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

3 very large apples, peeled, cored and chopped into 1-inch chunks

2 large eggs

3/4 cup sugar

2 tbsp rum

1 tsp vanilla

1 stick butter, melted and cooled

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and line an 8-inch round pan with removable bottom with baking or parchment paper. Wrap the bottom of the pan with aluminum foil.

Sift and whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.

Whisk the eggs in another bowl until foamy, then add the sugar. Whisk until smooth and incorporated. Add the vanilla and rum. Mix well.

Alternately add the flour and butter in two batches. Mix well and gently after each addition to have a smooth batter.

Fold in the apples with a spatula. Pour the batter into the pan and spread evenly with a spatula.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until the top of the cake is golden brown and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool for 15 minutes before removing from the pan.

Since the cake is really moist, it is best to keep it uncovered or lightly covered at room temperature. I have also found out that it tastes better if you heat it quickly in the microwave for a few seconds before eating.

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.

Vegetarian Chilli

Anybody else notice that wee cold snap today? True, we don't get Minnesota cold here, but our houses aren't insulated like theirs, and we can't just hop into our car and drive everywhere. No, we have to brave the wind, rain, and hail as we go to and from our local educational institutions...or to and from the bus stop, anyway.

Monday this autumn has been swimming day for us, so normally I make some kind of soup as it's easy to heat up when the kids and I get back. But today, I felt like something different, something to mark the end of the Monday afternoon swim lessons. Something like CHILLI!

Now, now, don't get too excited. It isn't chilli con carne, but a vegetarian chilli based off of a recipe in Nigella Lawson's Feast. (and yes, I have been watching the news each day for reports on the trial.  I find it ghoulishly fascinating getting a glimpse inside the Domestic Goddess's household.  Yes, I'm a bad person). This recipe is wonderfully tasty, and not so runny, bland, or wholesome tasting as I find most veggie chillis. It's gooood, real gooooood, but I can't pretend it's the same as the meat lover's variety.

First, I actually got my act together enough to put out the ingredients. Trust me, this was more than I expected myself capable of today:

It's a huge recipe. I make the full batch and then freeze about 2/3 of it for future lazy evenings. I can usually get my kids to eat this pretty easily, so I'm happy to make a big batch of it.
First, in went the onions. Nigella says to put the onions in with the peppers and garlic straight away, but I didn't have enough room on my chopping board to easily slice them all at once, so I just stuck the onions in to cook while I went on to do the peppers. Why use more than one chopping board or bowl if you don't have to?

So those sizzled and I chopped up the peppers and added them.

Then I put the garlic on top.  Stir, stir, stir, soften, soften, soften.

Now for a bit of SPICE. Me like-a the spice-a!

Ahem.

Coriander seed, lots of paprika, cardamom pods, and ground cumin went in. I usually use cumin seeds, but the other day I bought some, used them, and then couldn't find them, so went out to my corner shop and bought the only form of cumin they had, which was ground cumin. I then came home to find the cumin seeds...in the fridge.  Oops.  Stupid brain.  So now I'm using up the ground cumin as it doesn't last as long as the seeds.

And I use paprika rather than the crushed chilli she calls for because my little people eat more if I don't put it in.  Paprika adds a similar flavour without making my kids drink 2 gallons of water with their meal.

You needed to know all that, didn't you?  Course you did.

Once those had heated up, in went a couple boxes of chopped tomatoes.

And some water from rinsing them out. I got the wooden utensil from Williams Sonoma, a store I love that can be a bit over the top: http://deadspin.com/the-2013-haters-guide-to-the-williams-sonoma-catalog-1481230580

Then in went the kidney beans. I use canned beans, because apart from the fact that cooking your own beans is a pain in the backside, I find I never manage to get them soft enough when I cook them myself. Then I read about how if you under-cook kidney beans it can make you deathly ill, even land you in hospital, and decided I'm done with using dried kidney beans.

For more kidney bean stories, read this: http://dailynewsen.com/2013/10/18/delia-smith-and-esther-rantzen-reheat-1970s-chilli-con-carne-feud.html

or just keep looking at my chilli being created. Your choice.

A squirt of ketchup.

Some more squirts of tomato puree

Then some oregano and some unsweetened cocoa powder.  Trust me on this one.

Oh, and the lentils.  They were supposed to go in after we fried up the spices, but I forgot. It'll be fine.

A quick stir...

Then I let it simmer for 40 minutes.  At the end, I sprinkled some chopped coriander on it and left it to intensify in flavour until we returned in the evening.  We had some rice and sour cream with ours with some tortilla chips on the side too. And now, in my freezer, in 6 different randomly sized containers, I have what's left of it.  Why so many? Because those are the only ones I could find, of course.

Vegetarian Chilli (adapted from recipe in Nigella Lawson's Feast)

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 large peppers, diced
• 1 Tbsp paprika
• 1 1/2 tsp  coriander seeds
• 1 Tbsp ground cumin
• 4 cardamom pods, lightly crushed
• 300g red lentils
• 2 cans chopped tomatoes
• 1 1/2 cans water from tomato containers
• 2 cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 3 Tbsp ketchup
• 3 Tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 
  
• For serving:
• small handful fresh coriander, chopped
• sour cream
• rice
• tortilla chips
• 
  

1. To prepare chili, heat olive oil over medium-low heat in a deep, wide pan with a lid. Add onions, garlic and bell peppers, and sauté until softened, about 5-10 minutes. Stir in paprika, coriander, cumin and cardamom pods. Stir in lentils.
2. Add chopped tomatoes, kidney beans, ketchup, tomato paste, cocoa, oregano, and water. Stir well. Cover, and simmer, stirring frequently, until mixture is thickened and beans are tender, about 45 minutes. Taste and season. Sprinkle on coriander and serve alongside rice, sour cream, and tortilla chips.

Cranberry Orange Sauce

So...yeah, it's been a wee while. The Thanksgiving chaos was swiftly followed by preparation for Christmas and a return to the paying workplace for me. I'm not back full time, just two days a week, but it does make life considerably more busy. The photos below were actually taken just before Thanksgiving, would you believe it.

A few people have asked lately what happened to my blog, so I figured this would be a simple start back. And this recipe is certainly simple, incredibly so, especially the list of ingredients.  You only need three things: cranberries, sugar, and oranges.  Well, water too, but I'm assuming if you are reading this you have clean drinking water available.

One of the fantastic things about cranberry sauce is its versatility. The children who came over on Thanksgiving day decided to use it as jam on their bread rolls, and I've known people to put it with peanut butter in a sandwich too.  It is tasty with other meats, or even heated and put on ice cream. Yes, really.

Don't look at me like that.

The cranberries I used on this occasion were (as you can see on the packet) of North American origin. No doubt the fields were flooded to harvest them, they were then refrigerated and flown over just for me, giving them a considerable carbon footprint. But you know what I have in my freezer right now? Scottish grown cranberries! I found them at the farmers market last week. Baffled by their presence, I confirmed with the grower that he had, in fact, grown them himself. He insisted he had, and that he had harvested them by hand as they didn't have any.  So no flooded cranberry fields here. The oranges and sugar are not local.

The recipe comes from Joy of Cooking. My book is falling apart just now, but I'm having difficulty tracking down the exact edition I have, as it is a UK one with UK measurements and ingredients that I got in 2001 and I don't know its ISBN. Someday soon I'm going to have to get a new one as mine is falling to bits, but there has been controversy over its various editions and I don't want to get the wrong one. I do have my mother's 1975 edition, which is fun reading, but I'm scared to use it in its pristine state.

For this recipe it doesn't matter if the cranberries are frozen or fresh, as you'll be boiling them anyway. All you do is put the berries, the zest of a couple oranges, their juice, sugar, and water in a pan together and stick it on the hob. Turn the hob on too, that helps a lot.

As the berries heat up, they brighten in colour.  Sometimes they'll go so dark you'll think they're burning, but they're not. Just keep stirring.

And at this point a baby might cry and you'll have to turn off the heat, go put the baby back to sleep, and then return to the kitchen.  That's ok, it happens.  The sauce will still be just fine.

Don't the cranberries look so purdy?  You can see the skin starting to split on some of them and the sugar has dissolved.

And here we are a bit further down the line. Most of the skins have popped and you can see the seeds spilling out. That's it, really, just let it cool. Pretty simple, and darned tasty. And you can do this several days in advance, then leave it in your fridge for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or just general consumption. If you are the sort of person who has cherry brandy in their house, I think that would taste pretty good in this as well.

Cranberry Orange Relish

450g cranberries
450g sugar
zest 2 oranges
125 ml orange juice (about 2 oranges)
125ml water

Heat ingredients together on a low heat until sugar is dissolved, then simmer until most berries have popped and mixture thickens slightly. Remove from heat and put into bowl to cool.  Keeps for several days in fridge.