Cooking With Cider - Red Cabbage and Apples

It's almost tax time, so we were on a Skype call this past week with our German friends, Harald and his wife Inge. We help Harold negotiate the finance world of US banks and tax law sometimes. Anyway, in making small talk about late winter and what everyone has been doing and eating during COVID lockdowns, the topic of schnitzel and veggies came up. One thing lead to another and by the time I began planning for dinner, pork medallions and red cabbage became my targeted ingredients. Hiel and I really miss the German fare that we had when we would meet friends at the local restaurants in Baden -Württemberg. Between missing our friends and missing the German culture, I was back to the schnitzel and sides.

Torta de Mele - Tuscan Apple Cake

A perfectly gorgeous apple cake with bits of apple swirled into the whipped batter and a cloche of apple slices swirling about the top of the cake ... dense and moist when it comes from the oven, with the most heavenly aroma of apple and vanilla sugar. It is a treat!

Apple Sticky Buns for St Lucia Day !!!

This little Santa Lucia doll sits on the table by our Christmas tree every year ... she's a sweet reminder of SB's Swedish roots and a reminder to me that come Santa Lucia Day (December 13th), it's time to make a special batch of breakfast rolls, coffeecake, or cinnamon buns to have with our morning coffee or tea!

Salted Caramel "Apple Charlotte"

One day, I'll make a true Warm Apple Charlotte, but until that time, this will have to suffice. And there's no real problem with this 'dumbed down' version of a very old recipe. The first Apple Charlotte recipe that's on the books comes from an English cookbook that appeared in 1796. This factoid comes courtesy of my CIA Baking at Home Cookbook. That being said, today's dessert comes from the Old Farmer's Almanac Readers' Best Recipes cookbook that I won a couple weeks ago when I entered an apple pie baking contest.

Apple Cake with Maple Frosting

Our berries have been stolen by chipmunks ... the little beggars have plucked any with even a bit of color and I am left with apples in my fridge. Instead of fresh biscuits and strawberries, I have been reduced to making an apple cake ... ah well. It's a pretty cake loaded with small diced apple bits and golden raisins soaked and puffed to perfection. The last of the maple syrup was added to butter and cream cheese to make a frothy bowl of frosting and voila! Another beautiful cake ...

Let those little thieves have the berries for the time being. We have apple cake with maple frosting !

This is a dense and very moist cake that is reminiscent of carrot cake. It has a big soft crumb and super moist chunks of fruit that are spread throughout the cake. It's a good keeper of a cake in that it stays terrific for a couple days ... sorry no photos of cut pieces, as it went to the little white church for fellowship time  ... it's a very good cake. Trust me.

Apple and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Frosting

an Ottolenghi recipe

Cake Ingredients:

4 tbsp. water

1/2 c. golden raisins

2 1/4 c. flour

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 c.olive oil

3/4 c. granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs, beaten

3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, small dice (1/2 inch)

zest f one lemon

2 egg whites, whipped to soft peaks

Maple Frosting Ingredients:

7 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened

a scant 1/2 c. Muscovado sugar

1/4 c. maple syrup

8 oz. cream cheese, softened 

Making the Cake:

1. Pre heat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Grease an 8-inch spring form pan and line it with parchment paper.

2. Place the water and golden raisins in small saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover and turn off the heat. Let the raisins soak until cool.

3. Sift together in a small bowl the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside.

4. Beat the olive oil, sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well.

5. Turn in the diced apples, raisins and any residual fluid, and lemon zest. Mix well.

6. Turn in the dry mix and stir to a thick batter.

7. Turn in the egg white meringue in two additions, gently turning in until incorporated.

8. Turn the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 1/2 hours. A cake tester should come clean.

9. Cool the cake for five minutes and then release the outer band of the spring form pan. Let the cake, then, cool completely.

10. Use a serrated knife to slice the cake into two even layers.

11. Whip the frosting ingredients in a deep bowl until perfectly smooth and frothy.

12. Place half the frosting on the bottom layer. Top with the second layer and frost the top of the second layer.

13. Chill the cake before serving to set the frosting.

DH's Slaw and Stories

Here's a cabbage and apple slaw without all that mayo. Diana Henry presents it as a great healthy side dish in her cook book called A Change of Appetite - Where Healthy Meets Delicious. This crisp and crunchy side nestled up to potato salad and a slow-cooked beef brisket dressed with Bourbon-Peach BBQ Sauce last evening. More on that beef brisket in another post.

Apple Roses For My Sweetheart ...

It's St. Valentine's Day! I know this is a day for romanticism, but I am a pretty pragmatic gal. A man's got to eat, so he might as well eat stuff that he likes. Finding a sweet and romantic dessert that plays well with the day's lovey-dovey theme is pretty perfect. To boot, this recipe has been floating around the social media scene for the past few weeks and I've been curious to see just have 'easy and tasty' this website's recipes really are. So here we go ... I called up Tip Hero and followed their minimal directions to make these pretty little Apple Roses.

Apple Brie Bites

I recently went to the wedding of two friends from our little church in Peterborough. It was a simple sunflower-themed affair that was attended by many in the church family as well as the entire blended family of Jim and Sue, the bride and groom.

Sue had the wedding reception catered by a woman who runs a small local restaurant. This lady has such a nice touch with small bites! She had two very long tables laid heavy with all manner of hors d'oeuvres, cheese platters, and sweet treats. With a sparkling punch, the small plates provided just the right 'wedding party' feel to the afternoon. These small apple and brie bites were one of the offerings.

Smothered Pork Chops with Mustard and Thyme Butter

Normally, at this time of year, I'm perking up and looking for the first asparagus at the market and poking around the edge of the grey cottage's foundation for the first crocus spears, hoping for their happy golden and purple splashes of color against the brown of earth and crust of melting snowy patches. Ahem ... someone please give a whisper in Mother Nature's ear! It's snowing ... again. The joke is old, Mother dear.

Instead of flinging open windows to bring in a Spring-ish breeze, I'm poking more logs on the fire and contemplating what bit of warm Winter-ish comfort food I can concoct for dinner that will use the oven. Diana Henry's Mustard and Thyme Pork Chop Bake sounds good ... and the smells are fantastic.

Tarte Nougat-Pommes

Oh! The pictures I have for this post! There was something about the slightly sweet and lemony apples and the slippery, sugary almond nougat that made me grab my camera and really document this incredible tart ... and it all started here ...

Maple Apple Cake - Gluten Free and Great

I very rarely return to a recipe within a few weeks, even if I love the recipe. Those food bloggers who make a recipe to the letter the first time, and then return right a way to adapt it and perfect it before posting it are a different breed of cooks. I am a food diarist. What you see is what you get and if I adapt a recipe, I usually adapt it right out of the gate because I've read the recipe through and thought about it's ingredients or the cooking instructions, or the constraints of my pantry or the likes and dislikes of our house full of hungry folk, or, or, or ...

That being said, I want you to meet this Maple Apple Cake. This cake (above) started out as Rum Apple Cake, a recipe straight from The FOOD 52 Cookbook.

Buttermilk Waffles with Sautéed Apples

When I was a kid, Dad would sometimes haul an aged and decrepit waffle iron out of the closet on Saturday mornings and mix up batter to make brown crispy waffles for us kids. We'd get a stack of two or three waffles, a side of bacon or sausage links and a big glass of juice for breakfast. I always felt like the luckiest kid in the world for some reason. I can remember swinging my legs under the breakfast table in anticipation of watching gobs of butter melting in the little nooks and crannies of the waffles and chanting for more maple syrup when Dad divvied out the liquid gold.

Food memories are such powerful things!

A Thin Little Tart ...

... a thin little fruit tart that matches the thin little cardamom-dusted almond slices that deck its top ...

Apple-Cranberry Streusel Pie

My pie obsession continues to grow, as I find more tempting filling recipes for a couple of pie crusts. But wait, sometimes it's just as tasty to plop a filling into a pie shell and top the whole mess with a crunchy streusel!

... meet Apple-Cranberry Streusel Pie ...

Triple Apple Cake

Look at this sticky, sweet/tart cake ! I was originally thinking that it should be served warm with a  big gob of vanilla ice cream along side, but ...

A Little Cake-y

 

... a pretty little patty pan of a pastry ... but, what's under that crust, you ask ? ....

Cooking With Nigel - Baked Apple Chicken Sausages and Golden Mash

I'm not quite through with my fascination with bangers and mash, as you can see. This week's version highlights apple chicken sausages that are browned and baked with onions, apple slices, fresh thyme leaves, black pepper, and a brown sugar sweetened gravy of broth and dark beer.

Kaleidoscopic Cups and Savory Muffins ....

It's amazing the gadgets and nifty little kitchen items there are in the world these days! Who would think that I could get a charge out of these little silicone muffin cups ... but I do ... now.  First of all, they came to me free and clear from the people at New York Baking Company, and anything free is like manna from heaven to a Yankee like me!

Tomten's Christmas Adventures Part One ...

For much of the year, Tomten spent his time perched on the edge of a high shelf in the corner of his Lady's kitchen. He watched her come and go with the dogs and the cats, arrange lovely flowers into pretty little nosegays, and bake cookies that she put in the cookie jar that kept him company.  All the while, he kibbitzed with the other gentlemen who occupied his shelf.

Butter for Breakfast with No Apologies !

I recently gifted myself this book about apples. Now, I suppose there are a kazillion books about apples out there in Biblioland, but this one struck me as really interesting, as most of the orchards and the places that the author writes about are within spitting distance of our little grey cottage. Amy Traverso writes a book ABOUT apples and then hits us with recipes that have apples, cider, cider vinegar, dried apples, apple juice as main ingredients or as complements to other mains. It's an awesome book with a lot of interesting tidbits about heritage apples, apple genetics and cultivation, stories about regional orchardists and the apples they grow, interviews with horticulturists, brewers, bakers, and backyard hobbyists. It was such a fun read for me that I passed it over to SB. He enjoyed it also ... which says something because SB doesn't usually give a hoot about cookbooks. Well, after SB had his way with the book, I grabbed it back and took second and third looks through it. The book rested on the floor by the bedside table for a few days, which is probably a bad place for a cookbook to be - visions of sugarplums and all that. However, it may explain the overwhelming urge this morning for these sticky apple biscuit buns...