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On Saturday, I set out to make this apple cake, one of Amanda Hesser's reprints from the NY Times archives. I had seen The Wednesday Chef's post about it, and I followed her advice about using less sugar. I decided to use some brown sugar for the flavor, and ended up using 1 c. sugar and 1/2 c. brown sugar. I also used pecans instead of walnuts, and skipped the raisins/cranberries entirely.As the cake was baking, I remembered another apple cake recipe I had seen and meant to try (Ok, I may have a little bit of an obsession with apple cake. It's just so good and wholesome and delicious and FALL). I looked it up, and lo and behold, I had essentially ended up making exactly this recipe! (The recipe accompanies a nice little story from NPR.) The recipe is incredibly simple, yet to me is the platonic ideal of apple cake. It's not too sweet, there's a hint of spice, and the cake full of the flavor and texture of apple. In short, it's perfect, and I'm looking for a chance to bake another one very soon.
(I used Jonamac apples; I think McIntosh would also be great, or any slightly tart apple.)
My favorite way to celebrate my birthday is to cook a huge dinner and have a crowd of friends over to share it with. This year I went with Chicken stewed with shallots and prunes, as well as a swiss chard and feta fritatta for my vegetarian friends, roasted potatoes, the Pioneer Woman's green beans, and a beet salad. To start we had dates stuffed with goat cheese (some wrapped in bacon), slow roasted tomatoes (which really should have been served like so I learned a few days too late) and roasted eggplant. Later there was an amazing chocolate cake (with chocolate cream cheese frosting!) that would win over me, a decided non-chocolate cake enthusiast, and a plum cake. The only photographic evidence of the meal is of dessert, above. But really, what else do you need to see? That chocolate cake was amazing. (Thank you, Leigh!)
Summer fruit galore...I have been getting tons of fruit from my CSA - pounds of peaches and plums every week. I find myself freezing some, and also baking to use it up.
Above is Dorie Greenspan's Dimply Plum Cake that I made this weekend. I made a few changes to Dorie's recipe. I used small prune plums, so used quite a few more than the recipe called for, and also used cinnamon instead of cardamom. It's a nice coffee cake.
I made this peach cobbler several weeks ago for a potluck dinner. It was a great way to use up a bounty of peaches from my CSA. For the cobbler topping, I used the recipe in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (my go-to cookbook for nearly everything). Since I didn't have buttermilk and didn't want to buy a whole quart just for 1/2 cup, I tried adding lemon juice to regular milk. It worked great - the cobbler still had that tangy buttermilk flavor that I love.
I made these blackberry almond cupcakes for a recent work potluck, based mostly off of a Martha Stewart recipe, using blackberries instead of cherries and baking them in a regular size muffin tin (it made 12). The real reason to make these was to use egg whites, as I knew we'd be using egg yolks for ginger ice cream... to be posted soon.
Above is a delicious and refreshing blackberry basil lemonade I made recently, trying to cool off on a hot and humid summer day. I used Molly's recipe for basil lemonade, and then, to use up the blackberries I had left over from making cupcakes, added a little berry juice. I also used seltzer instead of plain water to give it some fizz. This is probably the most refreshing thing I've had to drink in months, and also think this would make a nice "mocktail" for anyone avoiding alcohol.
