All About Apples

Between trips to an apple farm and my daughter’s house, I’ve been well-supplied and haven’t had to spend a cent (for apples!) at the supermarket. Fresh picked apples—mmm! They’re the best.

My daughter and her family bought a house two years ago and started their country life with five HUGE apples trees—several different varieties that have not yet been identified but have distinct differences in taste, sweetness and tartness.

Lots of apples their first year but with the moving in and settling down, apple experimentation was not on the menu. Instead, the boys—my little grands—were paid 50-cents a bucket to pick up the many apples. Really, they had to be picked up; otherwise, a walk/run through the backyard and under the apple trees was more like roller skating, from apple to apple.

Last year, their second year of country life, not a single apple appeared!

And now it’s Year #3 and those trees have broken a record in apple production. They’ve also broken several branches due to the weight of the many, many apples.

Son-in-law built a wooden apple press. They’ve made cider. They’ve made and canned applesauce, apple pie filling and apple butter. They’ve given away apples. Still, I find myself “rolling” through the backyard when I visit and the dog is taking me for a walk.

Back to the apple farm: I brought home Honeycrisp that weighed almost a half pound each and were so-o sweet. I also picked MacIntosh, also sweet but with a bit of tartness. They worked well together.

I selected two recipes and loved both! So, here for your baking and eating pleasure are FRENCH APPLE CAKE and APPLE CREAM CHEESE COFFEE CAKE. (Click on the links to see the recipes and click on each photo to see an enlarged, detailed picture.)



FRENCH APPLE CAKE

from BigOven.com ~ cake crust, apple filling, custard filling, garnish

APPLE CREAM CHEESE COFFEE CAKE

from AllRecipes ~ baked in an angel food cake pan (10-inch tube pan).
Cream cheese and confectionery sugar mixture is spread on the bottom layer of batter and topped with another batter layer. A mixture of walnuts, sugar and cinnamon is sprinkled on top before baking.

For more apple recipes, visit these 2011 and 2012 posts on Step By Step In The Kitchen…

APPLE-RAISIN BARS WITH RED HOT CINNAMON CANDIES

FRESH APPLE YOGURT CAKE

APPLE ALMOND CAKE

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My other blog is CORNING NY STEP BY STEP -- a view of the city where I live.

CORNING NY STEP BY STEP is now on Facebook. LIKE it and you’ll see when I post a new entry to that blog, plus there will be extra photos of people, places and things of Corning that didn’t make it into the blog.

Happy 6th Birthday Cake!

My youngest grandson will be 6 on Tuesday, but there’s a party tomorrow! Devon, plus seven friends, plus his big brother and his friend, plus Mom, Dad and possibly other parents. You know how it goes.

I’m lucky ‘cause I get to make the cakes each year for the boys. One of the cakes, that is. Mom provides a small cake for the four of them to celebrate. Then there are individual cakes for a party each with their friends. Then one more cake--a bigger one, for a celebration of both birthdays with extended family. I’ll bet you’ve done that, too!

After ten years of birthday cakes and crazy themes, I headed them off at the pass this year. Devon, I asked, what kind of cake do you want? Marbled white and chocolate. That’s easy enough. What colors do you like, Devon? Red, not too dark. Green and blue. Okay, now to combine that with my idea of a “6” for his sixth birthday.




I’m not going to supply any cake recipe, nor will I give you my favorite icing recipe. Simply use a cake recipe you like. The same goes for the icing. It doesn’t matter.
Don’t bother worrying too much about how to make the number look perfect (I did!). When you frost the cake, you’ll cover all the problem areas and the finished cake will look wonderful.




The cake is topped with red, green and blue chocolate pieces and curls. I got the idea from my blogger friend Sibella, at Baking With Sibella, who used them on her beautiful Valentine’s cake. She, in turn, told of finding the idea at one of my new favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman.




This last picture isn’t quite true to color, but I wanted to include it to show you the black squiggles I added at the last minute. And here’s why... I went shopping with Devon’s mom, my daughter, yesterday to pick up last minute items for the party. She’s sometimes a last minute kind of gal. In this case, she wandered the dollar store and finally decided on a pirate theme.

Oh, great, I fixed a “6” cake with red, green and blue chocolate curls. Nothing too pirate-like about that! Then I remember I had a tube of black decorating gel. I think it looks more pirate-like now... Argh!

Candy Cane Cake for Christmas!

I -- lucky for me! -- discovered this scrumptious Candy Cane Cake on FoodBlogs. What an ideal addition to our family’s day-before-Christmas-eve dessert party!

You can find the original recipe for Candy Cane Cake at What’s Cooking: Happenings in the Kitchen and Around the Home.

Lots of detailed directions, but in spite of the length of the recipe, it turned out to be fairly easy to follow and just as easy to make. I’m speaking from a partially observational point of view, because although I baked the cake two weeks earlier and kept it in the freezer, on the day of the occasion I was on the ending edges of a cold (sniffle, sneeze, yuck!). My son -- home for the holidays -- lent a helping hand by preparing the icing, applying it to the cake and finishing up with the decorations. All under my tutelage, of course :)

This icing is outstanding. Use the very best white chocolate you can find and real, unsalted butter. It sets up nicely, but not rock hard like you might expect with the chocolate. This assures that you will have enough time to frost, swirl and decorate.

When it came time to cut the cake, I cut a circle around the tall candy canes in the center, and then cut the outer portion into wedges as you can see in the next photo.

The leftovers came home with me to serve as dessert for Christmas eve supper at my home -- an annual tradition -- for son, daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons. After supper, after dessert and after opening presents, I caught my daughter back at the table with the cake plate in front of her, fork in hand. She had a spellbound look in her eyes and was attacking that center circle of cake.


You’ll want to bookmark this page or pin it for next Christmas. Or maybe for anytime of the year, because I can see using this same cake recipe (maybe with a sub for the peppermint flavor) and, definitely, the same icing -- with a different theme.

Just a reminder... the recipe for the Candy Cane Cake is can be found at What’s Cooking: Happenings in the Kitchen and Around the Home

Once-Upon-A-Christmas Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Looking through my collection of food photos, I came across a group of pictures I’d labelled “Pineapple-Marshmallow Upside-Down Cake”. Then I looked through my file folder -- that’s a real folder with all kinds of handwritten notes and recipes cut out of magazines -- I found a recipe I’d named “Once-upon-a-Christmas Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

I don’t know as either title does this cake justice. I also wonder about posting about a food that appears to be for Christmas. Obviously (I think...) I’d planned to post this one shortly after the holidays because I used up my peppermint candy canes in it. And there was the red and white theme -- candy canes, marshmallows, cherries.

The original recipe came from my Betty Crocker cookbook. Betty Crocker has been my “friend” for many years. Safe, simple and dependable. That is, until I step up and start adding whatever I can find. You’ve heard the saying... “everything but the kitchen sink”.

CLICK ON PHOTOS TO SEE ENLARGED VERSIONS.


So, if this recipe were to be properly named, listing all the ingredients, it might be called

ONCE-UPON-A-CHRISTMAS PINEAPPLE, MARSHMALLOW, PEPPERMINT CANDY CANE, WALNUT, MARASCHINO CHERRY UPSIDE DOWN CAKE.

That’s just too wordy, so I’m sticking to OUAC-Pineapple Upside-Down Cake.

Ingredients...

1-1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup granulated white sugar
1/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup milk (any)
1 large egg
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
2 six-inch peppermint candy canes
7 large marshmallows
20-ounce can sliced pineapple
8 maraschino cherries (stems removed)


Directions...

1. Preheat oven to 350-degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Blend flour, white sugar, shortening, milk, baking powder, salt and egg for thirty seconds. Mix on low mixer setting for three minutes. Set aside.

3. Melt butter in oven in the pan you’ll be using to make the upside-down cake. (I used a 7-inch x 11-inch x 1.5-inch glass pan.) Remove from oven.

4. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly on melted butter, then top with walnuts.

5. Crush candy canes. Small chunks are best. I put mine in a plastic bag and whacked them gently with a small hammer. Sprinkle evenly over butter-brown sugar mixture.

6. Cut each marshmallow into four thin circles, for a total of twenty-eight. Space evenly over ingredients already in pan.

7. Arrange pineapple slices evenly in pan. It may be necessary to cut at least one in half to make the fit.

8. Place a maraschino cherry in the center of each pineapple ring.

9. Pour batter carefully over top of all the other ingredients in the pan.

10. Bake 45 - 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

11. Place a heatproof serving plate/platter over the pan and turn the whole assembly upside down. Important: Leave the cake pan in place for 5 - 6 minutes. Carefully remove the pan and let the cake cool about 15 minutes before serving.

Wherever you live in the world, no matter what language you speak, you can now read my blog. Blogspot has added a translation Gadget. Isn’t that the coolest thing? Look up near the top right hand side and you’ll see what I mean. If you have any kind of a blog, "Translate" is a good Gadget to add.


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One of my favorite food blogs is Bam’s Kitchen. In a recent posting she added a video on How to Peel a Head of Garlic in less than 10 seconds. No muss, no fuss, no stinky fingers, this is perfect for those of you who crave fresh garlic.

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LIKE Step by Step in the Kitchen on Facebook. I'll be posting extra notes and photos there.

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