Apple Cake

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The past week has been a very eventful and exciting one.  A week ago today, we headed to the hospital to welcome this little guy into the world.  Despite his surprise arrival eight days early, we could not be happier that he is finally here.

Since the arrival of Carson, I haven’t been doing much cooking or baking.  Carson was born on Sunday and Ben’s parents and my mom made it to Amarillo in time to be some of the first to meet him.  My parents have been here since then and my mom has been making breakfast, lunch and dinner for us as well as cleaning up and doing laundry for me.  I don’t know how we’re going to survive once they leave this afternoon!  Thankfully Ben’s parents and Aunt Claire will be here on Tuesday, so we won’t be on our own for long.

Last night Patti brought over a pork roast, rolls and gravy; my mom made mashed potatoes and a salad; and my mom and I made this apple cake.  It was a simple dessert and I’m planning to make it again for Thanksgiving.  The ingredient list is short, and there are no special skills required to make this cake…which is more tart- or pie-like, really.  I found the recipe here on A Whisk and a Spoon.

We ate the cake with a scoop of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream.  It was the perfect combination.

Apple Cake

Courtesy of A Whisk and a Spoon

Ingredients

  • 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for greasing pan
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped and reserved
  • 1 1/4 pounds (3 to 4 small to medium) Granny Smith apples
  • 1/2 cup AP flour, plus mor for dusting the pan
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 cup milk, at room temperature
  • Powdered sugar for dusting

Directions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line the base of an 8-inch springform pan with parchment, then smear with thick layer of butter. Dust with flour; turn pan over and tap lightly to remove excess flour.  Melt butter in small saucepan (you can take it a step further and lightly brown it, if you like). Set aside.
  2. Beat together eggs and half the sugar in a bowl (it’s not hard to do by hand). Continue to beat while slowly adding remaining sugar until thick; it should form a ribbon when dropped from a spoon.  Add the vanilla seeds to the batter and add the pod to the melted butter.
  3. Peel, quarter and core apples, then trim ends and slice thinly.
  4. Remove vanilla pod from butter and stir butter into egg-sugar batter. Combine the flour and baking powder, then stir it into batter alternately with milk. Stir in apples, coating every piece with batter. Pour batter into pan, using fingers to pat top evenly.
  5. Bake for 25 minutes, then rotate pan; bake for about 25 minutes more, until cake pulls away from pan and is brown on top; a thin-bladed knife inserted into center will come out clean when it is done. Cool 30 minutes on a rack.
  6. Remove the sides of the springform, cut the cake into wedges and sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

Kitchen Disaster: Cottage Cheese Banana Bread

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Some people have asked me how I choose the recipes I put on this blog.  I usually put any new recipe I try, because usually everything is pretty good and worth sharing.  But usually does not mean always.  Let’s use a bread recipe as an example.

I have been on a mission to rid my freezer and fridge of things that need to be used up.  Last week I decided to use the rest of a container of cottage cheese and some bananas I had frozen.  It seemed like an OK recipe.  The only ingredient out of the ordinary was the cottage cheese.  I thought it might create a creamy texture with a little tang.  Kind of like yogurt.  I think it was actually the downfall of this bread.  The cottage cheese curds baked in the bread created a truly funky texture.  The bread took a lot longer to bake than instructed below.  Even after 40 minutes in the oven the middle was gooey.  After 50 minutes I took it out of the oven and after cooling I sliced it up revealing a still undercooked center.  The edges were OK, but I ended up throwing the loaf away after eating half of a piece I had toasted and buttered.  And I don’t throw food away easily.  It just wasn’t worth it.

So, unlike other posts on Hottie Biscotti, this recipe is one that I do not recommend.  If you have a good bread recipe that uses cottage cheese, then please let me know.  At this point I am not likely to try another baked good where cottage cheese is involved.

Here is the recipe, and the source.

Cottage Cheese Banana Bread

Ingredients

  • 2 ripe bananas
  • 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese
  • 1/4 cup canola oil
  • Shake of cinnamon

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 325*F.
  2. Coat loaf pan with non-stick spray.
  3. Combine ingredients in large mixing bowl. Blend well.
  4. Pour batter into loaf pan; spread evenly.
  5. Bake for 32-35 minutes.

Oatmeal, Pecan, Coconut & Butterscotch Cookies

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A bag of butterscotch chips in my cupboard greeted me (by falling out onto the counter) the other day and so I took this as a sign to make something with them.  I found a recipe for pecan and oatmeal cookies, and so I just added the coconut and butterscotch chips because I have this, well, it’s a problem.  I like to add too many extras to a cookie.  Sometimes I can keep it simple and show some restraint, but most of the time I have the urge to add more and more goodies.

These cookies are very sweet, so one was enough for me.  I could eat probably 3 oatmeal raisin cookies in one sitting, but one of these sweet little things is enough sweet for me.  You could easily leave out the butterscotch chips or replace them with chocolate chips.  You can play around with the add-ins, so make them how you like them.  Enjoy!

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Freezer Meals

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With baby countdown at 2 weeks and 1 day I felt it necessary to make some freezer meals for those days (of which I’m sure there will be many) that I don’t have time to cook a real meal.  I searched quite a few websites for recipes that would freeze and reheat well.  I cannot attest to their post-freezer goodness , but I did some taste testing along the way and I was pleased with the flavors and a little upset that I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the food for dinner that night.

I didn’t want to make typical freezer meals.  Lasagna, chili and casseroles that use cans of cream of whatever soup were just not the kind of meals I was looking for.  Yes, I like to make things difficult for myself.  Yes, I am a bit of a food snob.  Ask me a year from now, and I think my love of convenience foods will have grown.  But since I have the time now, why not make something extra good?

Here is what I ended up with in my freezer.  Click on the meal for a link to the recipe.  The pastitsio and shepherd’s pie include freezing instructions.  I added my own for the chicken pasta.

Pastitsio – a layered Greek noodle dish with ground beef, tomatoes and bechamel sauce.  The beef layer is spiced with olives, oregano, cinnamon and oregano.

Chicken Florentine Artichoke Bake – a bowtie pasta casserole with chicken, artichokes, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and cheese.

Shepherd’s Pie – Turkey, tomato, peas, corn and mushrooms topped with mashed carrots and potatoes.

These are not the quickest meals to get prepped for the freezer.  But the time you spend now will be time you save in a few weeks or a couple months when you go to enjoy the results of your hard work.  I made the pastitsio the other afternooon, I think it took me about an hour and a half to cook and clean up.  I made the chicken pasta and shepherd’s pie Saturday morning, and I think my total chopping, cooking, boiling, packaging and cleaning time was 3 hours.  Here’s my kitchen during its worst moment on Saturday.

I know some of you have now decided that I am crazy to have spent that much of my Saturday morning on this project, but it’s something I’d planned to do…and so I had to do it.  I also kind of like spending that time in the kitchen and having something to show for it.  It makes me feel productive, and it’s a lot more fun that organizing the stacks of paper on the desk in the office.  And look at my fully stocked freezer!  Two 9×13 pans and two 8×8 pans of food waiting patiently to be eaten.  Why does this kind of thing make me happy?

Here are a few quick notes and changes on these recipes.  Some changes were made because of personal preferences, others because I forgot to or chose not to buy an ingredient.  I am becoming more and more comfortable with improvising in the kitchen.  It makes life so much easier, and it saves money too.  A jar of sun-dried tomatoes was going to set me back $5.99…so I used some sun-dried tomato pesto that I already had.  It makes me feel so resourceful when I can do things like that.

Pastitsio:

  • Left out the red wine
  • Used green olives instead of Kalamata
  • Used only 4 tablespoons of butter, 1 cup of milk and 1 egg in the pasta mixture
  • Use a LARGE and DEEP pan, I did not have room in a regular 9×13 to fit all the sauce.  It broke my heart to pour that creamy bechamel down the drain.

Chicken Florentine Artichoke Pasta

  • Cooked 2 chicken breasts in a skillet and chopped it up to make 2 cups
  • Used a 12 ounce package of pasta instead of 8 ounce
  • Used 2 tablespoons of sun dried tomato pesto instead of the chopped sun dried tomatoes
  • Freezer Instructions: Bake without bread crumbs for 15 minutes, then with bread crumbs for 5 minutes.  Let cool completely, then cover with plastic wrap and a couple layers of foil.  When ready to bake, let it thaw in the fridge overnight, then bake @ 350 F covered with foil for 20 minutes and without foil for 15-20 minutes or until nicely brown on top.

Shepherd’s Pie

  • Used 6 carrots and 4 large baking potatoes which was enough to top 2 8-inch pans
  • Made one of my pans with cheese, and one without
  • Used 1 1/2 cups mushrooms, 1 1/2 cups peas and 1 cup corn in addition to the meat and tomatoes

When Ben and I get around to eating these over the next couple months I will give some feedback about how the thawing and re-heating goes.  If you try them in the meantime and bake them right away, please let me know how they turn out!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

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Oh.  My.  Good.  Gracious.  These things are crazy good.  And they came about all because of one lonely jar of chunky natural peanut butter that had been stashed in the back of my pantry for a while.  He was reaching the end of his shelf life on November 8, 2010.  I bet this jar of peanutty goodness never even dreamed of being used in something so wonderful.  He thought maybe he was destined to be the star player in a few PB & J’s or maybe to be spread on some celery.  I had much bigger plans for him.

In order to use my natural peanut butter I just searched “desserts with natural peanut butter” in Google and after searching through a few cookie recipes I found this recipe on Joy the Baker.  Here is the link to the recipe.  I made minimal changes to the original.  Chunky instead of smooth peanut butter, regular brown sugar instead of dark, and semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of milk chocolate.

These taste like a dressed up Reese’s cup.  The peanut butter layer comes together easily in one pot.  The chocolate frosting is also incredibly simple to make and spreads nicely on the cooled bars.  This is an altogether simple and delicious bar that I will definitely be adding to my go-to recipe collection.  After frosting the bars I chilled them in the fridge which makes the quite easy to cut.  We ate them cold from the fridge and they were delicious, but letting them warm up a bit makes for a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth experience.  Enjoy! (more…)

Italian Sausage & Vegetable Soup

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When I bought the ingredients for this soup today it was intended to be “Italian Tortellini Soup”, a recipe I got from a woman who came to a Bible study group I am involved with.  It became this Italian sausage & vegetable soup when I realized that I did not use a large enough pot and had to leave out half the mushrooms and the entire package of tortellini.  Thankfully the soup came out OK and we’ll be enjoying it for the next few days!  It might be a blessing in disguise that my pot was too small.  This way we won’t be eating the same thing all week long.

Soup is quite forgiving.  The world does not come crashing down when you realize you’ve left something out, don’t have quite enough of an ingredient, added your ingredients in the wrong order, or added more of something than directed.  Thank goodness, since almost all of those things happened to me!

Ben was not happy when I told him the tortellini soup had no tortellini.  Ben likes tortellini.  But he ate it anyway and I think he thought it was pretty good.  He had a bowl and a half, so it couldn’t have been that bad.  I really liked how chock full of veggies this soup was.  The amount of sausage made it just meaty enough and provided a nice flavor.  I added a huge handful of torn basil leaves right before serving and that was lovely.  I really enjoy fresh basil and am sad I will have to wait until next summer to grow some of my own.  I have attempted this before…and failed.  But every summer I try again.  Maybe this next time I’ll get it right and it won’t wither and die on me.

Here is the recipe, which was adapted more than just a little bit since I was not quite on top of things when I went grocery shopping.  I will try out the original recipe sometime and post that as well.  Enjoy! (more…)