Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts

Friday, May 11, 2012

early bird apple cake


I woke up at six in the morning, on my own accord, and laid in bed until I decided to a) walk/run to the gym (eight miles total, heyyy) and then b) come home and bake an apple cake (womp womp). 

adapted from Smitten Kitchen
6 apples, I used a mixture of Golden Delicious, one Red Delicious, and a Granny Smith apple that were too old to be eaten plain. It was this or apple butter. 
1 Tbsp. cinnamon
5 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 3/4 cups flour, sifted

1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups light brown sugar
1/4 cup milk. (SK calls for orange juice but I didn't have any. Ooh! Next time I'll use Cointreau.)
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs

- Preheat oven to 350. Grease a bundt (Bundkt budkt. Oh! It's a cake!) pan. 
- Chop apples into chunks (you can peel them if you like. I'm lazy.), toss with cinnamon and sugar. 
- Stir together dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) in a bowl. 
- In another bowl, whisk together oil, sugar, milk (or orange juice or Cointreau), and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients with dry mixture, then add eggs one at a time. 
- In bundt pan, alternate layers of apple and batter. I did apples first, then batter, then more apples. I do believe Smitten Kitchen started with batter but I wanted a tarte tatin feel to it. 
- Bake until a tester comes out clean, about an hour and a half. 

* I had extra batter and apples and decided to bake them in a bread pan, which I then gave to the tall one. He calls it the apple brick. I didn't think the term brick was that appetizing, though it was very accurate. 

*I hummed this song the entire time I was writing this post. 

Monday, February 27, 2012

Cinnamon Toast Crunch cupcakes and the French Sweeney Todd


Cinnamon cake:
3 eggs
1/3 cup oil
¾ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup sour cream
Vanilla Cake Mix (YCoC says not white cake mix but that made no sense to me since the vanilla cake mix IS the white cake mix.)
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Buttercream:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
½ cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup Cinnamon Toast Crunch powder

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees in your friend's mom's wonderfully well-stocked kitchen with the crackerjack convection ovens. 
- In a large bowl (that took me three trips around the kitchen opening all the cabinet doors to find), combine the eggs, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla. Mix in sour cream. 
- Add cake mix and cinnamon and mix until smooth. Batter will be very thick and will smell of French toast. Resist the urge to eat raw cake batter (OR eat a tiny bit of cake batter). 
- Bake cupcakes for 15-18 minutes. Remove cupcakes from tin and let cool on cooling racks. 
- Buttercream: beat cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add vanilla then powdered sugar in batches (I can not stress this "in batches" part enough unless you want a confectioner's sugar cloud in your kitchen. It wasn't even my kitchen so I was doubly careful). Adjust consistency with milk. Mix in crushed cereal. 
- Frost cupcakes and top with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Try to watch Apocalypse Now (no longer on Netflix's instant view!) and watch most of Delicatessen instead. Suspenders, short shorts, and musical bed springs, how awesome. Cuddle with Teddy the Yorkie (who did not warm up to me until I had been there for at least two hours). 


(recipe adapted from Your Cup of Cake)

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

They bake AND surf?



Fábio: (emails video)
me: bakers and cute surf boys? I just showered, there are no clothes to throw off.
Fábio: hahahahaha! I didn't know how empty my kitchen soul was until I met my kitchen soul mate <3

Tartine Bakery