Alton Brown's Apple Cake

Now that I've gotten oranges out of my system, I'm moving on to apples. These abandoned apples were rescued from our lunchroom and made use of before they were thrown out. What would they do without me? After making apple pie, crumble and crisp, I thought it was time for cake. Earlier this year I had made Alton Brown's apple cake from his I'm Just Here for More Food- Baking. It flopped coming out of the bundt pan but tasted delicious, albeit a tad too sweet. So with apples in hand, I decided to make it again. This time, I reduced the sugar by half a cup and baked it in a nine inch springform to avoid any mishaps. Scented with cinnamon and nutmeg, my room smelled like fall once again. The apples softened beautifully in the oven and the bottom of the cake caramelized itself into yummy goodness. This apple cake is simple but a winner. A line formed for this cake as it was baking and impatient girls were waiting for a slice. The result? Cake gone in sixty seconds. Well not quite, it was more like five minutes, but the responses were the same all around- delicious. I sprinkled the top of this cake with sugar, both to caramelize the top and to give it a nice crunchy top. Use almost any apples you have around- I wouldn't use granny smiths though, I think they'd be too strong here. This cake is would be wonderful with vanilla ice cream. Oh, and if it's possible at all, allow to cool somewhat before letting anyone dig into it!

Apple Cake

adapted slightly from Alton Brown's recipe

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp freshly grated cinnamon

4 cups apples, unpeeled, cored and cut into chunks

Prehat your oven to 375. Lightly grease a 9 inch springform pan.

Have your apples ready. Set aside.Place the margarine and sugar in a bowl,and beat until smooth and creamy.Add the eggs and vanilla,
and beat until combined.Add the dry ingredients,and combine thoroughly.Fold in the apples.Heres my chunky batter.Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly to all sides of the pan. Sprinkle with sugar if desired.

Bake until the internal temperature reaches 212 degrees. For the bundt, AB says it would take about an hour and forty five minutes. I can't tell you what it took for me because I dont time things. But I would guess about and hour. Use your eyes, nose and thermometer to determine doneness. Watch as it quickly disappears.....

Sunny Orange Buns

I really should call this post round two of operation finish orange juice. That would be an appropriate title but I figure Sunny Orange Buns is a far more fitting title here because that's exactly what these are. Yeast dough bursting with bright, orange flavor baked like a cinnamon bun. I tried in vain to find a recipe for orange buns, leafing through all my books and searching the internet. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and I came up with this recipe. Using my favorite yeast dough recipe as a base, I swapped the milk for orange juice and added the zest of an orange. For the filling, I rubbed together and some more orange zest. I rolled up the dough jelly style, cut into buns and let chill out in the fridge until this morning. They baked up all golden and bubbly and delightful smelling. I mixed up a light glaze of some powdered sugar and fresh squeezed orange juice and drizzled it over. The results? Divine. The buns were not too sweet and suprisingly not too orange-y. These were perfect and a wildly successful experiment. I didnt measure my filling ingredients or glaze ingredients so just wing it. I'm sending these over to Yeastspotting!

Sunny Orange Buns

1 cup orange juice

2 eggs

1/3 cup oil

1 tsp vanilla

zest of one orange

1/2 cup sugar

4 3/4 cup flour or as needed

3/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp instant yeast

Filling:

sugar

orange zest

Glaze:

powdered sugar

freshly squeezed orange juice

To make the dough, place all of the wet ingredients in a bowl,
and whisk until combined.
In a separate bowl, place all of the dry ingredients.
Whisk thoroughly.
Add the flour mixture to the liquid ingredients.
Stir to make a shaggy dough.
Turn out onto a well floured surface,
and knead until a smooth but slightly tacky dough is formed.
Set the dough aside and allow to rise for about an hour to an hour and a half. The dough wont look like it has done much at all.
Meanwhile, rub the sugar and zest together.
Turn the dough out again. It should be smooth and easily handled.
Roll out the dough into a large rectangle. Brush with oil or melted margarine/butter. Sprinkle on the sugar/zest mixture. Press it into the dough.
Roll the dough up jelly roll style.
Cut into buns.
Place in the pan. I put these in the fridge overnight and baked the next morning. If that's not an option, allow to rise until puffy. Preheat the oven to 350.
Bake until golden brown and delicious.
Mix the zest and orange juice.
Drizzle over the buns. Mmmmm. I taste summer....

Orange Cake

After making the Hamentashen, I was left with a nice amount of orange juice. Not wanting to waste it, I set out to find something to bake with it. Of course I could just drink it.... but that would be no fun. I remembered this Orange Cake recipe from an Israeli cookbook of mine that I've had my eye on for a while and finally decided to make it. My roommate E had a party last night and I thought it would be nice for her to bring this cake. It turns out that there was so much food there that only a quarter of the cake got eaten. She brought the rest home where I got to taste it and the girls happily devoured it. :) One of my girls kept sneaking back into my room to cut slivers off of it. This cake is different from that other Orange Cake that appears on the blog in the technique. The eggs and sugar are beaten thoroughly until light and fluffy before the other ingredients are added, thus insuring a fluffy and delicate texture. This cake turned out moist and light, and bursting with bright orange flavor. It is so deceptively light that you could consume a lot of this cake without realizing. The only thing I would do differently is to add more orange zest and perhaps a pinch of salt. I love the way the cake looks just barely dusted with powdered sugar.

Orange Cake

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

2 1/2 cups flour

10 grams baking powder

1 cup canola oil

1 1/4 cups orange juice

zest of one orange

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 10 inch springform pan. Set aside.

Place the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl.
Using a mixer, beat the eggs and sugar for around eight minutes until tripled in volume and light in color. Set aside.
Measure out the oil, juice, and zest.
Combine the flour and baking powder thoroughly.
Add the flour mixture and liquid mixture alternately in three additions.
Thoroughly incorporate, taking care not to deflate the batter.Pour into the prepared pan.
Bake for around fifty minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow to cool for about ten minutes on a rack before removing the rim of the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack. Dust with powdered sugar.

Hamentashen

I should be studying. But I can't focus. I'm in middle of finals. The exam I took today was not too bad but I have another one on Thursday and I should be working. But does Biblical grammar sound palatable to you? Not as palatable as these Hamentashen, I bet. We just welcomed the month of Adar, the month that contains the holiday of Purim. Purim is the holiday that commemorates the salvation of the Jews from the hands of the Persians out to wipe them out. To celebrate the arrival of this month, I whipped up a batch of Hamentashen, more commonly known as Haman's hat cookies. This recipe comes from my mom's recipe files and it is a personal favorite. No other hamentashen compare to these that I've grown up on. My mom makes them small so that they bake up nice and crunchy and I make them the same way. There are tons of possible fillings, from jams, to peanut butter to dulce de leche to poppy seeds. Let your imagination run wild. The dough is soft and needs a significant amount of flour to roll out without sticking. Chilling the dough overnight or at least an hour before rolling helps.

Mom's Hamentashen

3 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup orange juice

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

Flour as needed

Place the eggs, oil, orange juice, vanilla, sugar and baking powder in a bowl.
Whisk until thoroughly combined.Add the flour in and mix until a soft, cohesive dough is formed.
Shape into a square, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm.
When you're ready to bake them, roll them out on floured surface and cut circles, depending on the size of cookies you want. Place the cut outs onto parchment lined baking sheets. Preheat the oven to 350.
Fill with desired filling and pinch together to form a triangle.
These are strawberry filled,
and baked until golden, maybe eight to ten minutes. Make sure to seal them well or they'll leak.These are filled with dulce de leche. Cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Happy holidays!