Italian Apple Cake

Anyone who has ever been to my house knows that more often then not an unknown or new face will pop up out of nowhere. It started six years ago and continues to this day, my home has become a bed and breakfast of sorts or the 'European Youth (not so youthful) Hostel' as my friends so eloquently refer to it. Some guests are here for just a few days, many return, others stay for months at a time and on the rare occasion, some are so deeply despised that just the utterance of their name can make me shudder. Regardless of the circumstance, it is fair to say that in my house you are more likely to find a face you don't recognize than one you do. This can be nice in moments of solitude, providing the unique comfort that only a conversation with a stranger can offer; a void filled, even if just for a moment. The guests can also be a cumbersome pain, like when they don't pick up on the fact that you may like to have coffee in quiet in the morning and no, you don't feel like talking. Disconcerting at times, the constant flow of strangers does create one unique opportunity, a reason to cook.

The other day, while working on a batch of granola for a few of my die-hard granola fans (yes, they exist and I love them), I discovered that an Italian guest would be arriving only a few days later. There are a lot of things I like about Italians, they tend to be good looking, they have lovely accents, and most importantly, they eat cake for breakfast. We also eat cake for breakfast, I suppose, but we like to name it something more 'acceptable' like muffin or loaf. Not my Italian brethren though. Nope, they take last night's dessert put it on the table in the morning and call that breakfast. Right on. Since my granola had already been allocated, I figured I had no choice but to make this guest a breakfast cake.

I have been wanting to make a cake like this one since I ate for breakfast when I was living in Italy. My favorite part? The very high fruit to batter ratio, the apples are the stars and the batter merely there to bind the thing together. It's lightly sweetened and delicate, verging almost more on a pudding than on a cake. It's everything I look for in a sweet, at any time of day.

Plum (Pear) Kuchen

I have never really considered myself a slacker, until now. About a month ago was the last night I wrote a blog post, around that time I also made this cake for the next blog post. It has taken me until now to share it. Pathetic, I know. I feel pretty terrible about the whole thing, not because there are so many readers out there dying to see what's next (there aren't), but because I pride myself on my ability to maintain this blog no matter how much other stuff I have going on. However, as my friends' favorite t-shirt reads, 'Shit Happens.' Right on.

The only issue with the whole waiting period is that this cake was much more seasonal when I first made it (I have a solution, be patient). When plums were at their peak, my house was chockful of them in all shapes and size; and what started off as an innocent evening at home one Friday turned into a full-blown plum tasting. Yes, for real. "The yellow sugar plums are definitely the sweetest, but a little mushy." "I must tell you, I like the texture of the Italian blue ones best." The best and worst part about this is that's it's not the first time a Friday night has turned into this kind of 'event' and I assure you it certainly won't be the last.

But back to the cake. This cake was a product of the aforementioned abundance of plums and a year-long desire to make a yeasted kuchen that I had seen in Gourmet a year prior. So I made it, but when it came out a leaden brick of underwhelming plum-ish cake, I went back to the drawing board (aka Epicurious).

Olive Oil Loaf

I am kind of an iced coffee fiend. Actually, I am an iced coffee fiend and luckily for me (or unluckily, rather) New York City has a plethora of overpriced and delicious iced coffees. I was shocked when I first moved to Montreal and the only iced coffees were these coyingly sweet and very gross "frappes." Then again, who really wants an iced coffee when its negative a million degrees? Hmm...well that is neither here nor there, since I am not actually here to talk about iced coffee today. I am here to talk about a place in New York that serves great iced coffee and even greater Olive Oil Loaf.

Abraco, which means 'hug' in Portuguese, is a teeny tiny espreso bar in the East Village serving "housemade semi-sweets and savories." The name is fitting, as you walk in you are literally embraced by the aromas of coffee, fresh baked goods, and homemade frittatas. It has been commended for its iced coffee, but the thing that really intrigued me was all the talk about the food they serve. Olive oil loaf, cured olive shortbread, and a whole slew of other incredible sounding things that I have yet to try. Anyhow, while I was still living through the iced coffee drought of Montreal, I kept reading about this place and knew that once I moved back to New York I would have to go ASAP. It took me about 2 weeks to make it there, but after one bite of olive oil love and a nibble of cured olive loaf, I (like everyone else) was hooked.

So, true to form, I had to figure out how to make these myself because, well, that's what I do. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the recipe for the cured olive shortbread, but I haven't given up hope yet.

Daring Bakers/Orange Tian

I often find myself frustrated when new Daring Baker's challenges are posted, because so often I find the recipes do not appeal to me. Almost every single time, I have been proven wrong. This month I was proven wrong yet again. For a dessert that sounded too much like orange creamsicle pudding, this tian far exceeded my expectations. That being said, the orange whipped cream combination is not totally my thing, but I liked it much more than I thought I would. So when I remake this (yes, I will be remaking it), I will probably try a berry version; this citrus version was good, but a berry version sounds great.

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

For those of you who don't know what a tian is (I didn't), its essentially an upside-down cake with a pate sablee base smeared with marmalade, then topped with lightly sweetened whipped cream, with circles of fruit segments on the top.

Guilty/Healthy Carrot Muffins

I have been feeling a little bit guilty these days, not because I did anything wrong, but because things have been so good. In this case good means cheesy, rich, and decadent, but so not New Year's resolution-y. If I have singlehandedly ruined your hopes of trimmer waistlines and physical perfection in time for bathing suit season, I apologize. I will take full responsibility for any disappointment you may feel in the coming months. My guilt is clearly so overbearing, that in the hopes of mending my wrongs I decided to try and make a healthy treat.

After making two batches of these I feel guilty yet again because even though the second batch was far superior and worth sharing the recipe for, at the end of the day these are still health muffins (read: a bit of a let down). As it turns out health muffins can never be great, they can be fine and make a decent breakfast, but delicious, fantastic or exquisite are not adjectives that will ever be applied to health muffins. The truth is that most of the time health muffins aren't actually healthy at all. They can often be worse for you than regular muffins because of the amounts of sugar and fat added to make them palatable. Anyhow, that point aside, I still feel a little bad that this recipe may not live up to the standards of TBD.

I am being a little bit hard on myself, these (unlike most commercial versions) actually are healthy and in that context they really are enjoyable.

Happy Birthday to Me

I have never been very good at most math, algebra, statistics, pre-calc all went straight over my head. However, along the way cooking and baking have helped me improve my skills, fractions are now a cinch and division just makes sense if you don't want to make six cakes. Beyond these simple skills, there is the more complicated algebra, for example:

1 cranberry upside down cake, plus

Happy Thanksgiving/Pear Cranberry Cake

Giving thanks is a funny thing, because it so often feels cliché and insincere, it’s so easy to know what I am grateful for, but it is so much harder to express it. Right at this very moment, as I sit at the airport waiting to board the plane that will bring me to my family, I am grateful that US Immigration and Border Control didn’t notice the stash of goodies I have stowed in my carry-on. Seriously, that’s all I can think about, how lucky I am that after several hours of work, the pumpkin cake, the spiced nuts and the cranberry-pear brown butter cake that I made last night are still safe and sound.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I feel like I should be waxing poetic about how lucky I feel that I have a loving family, wonderful friends, that I am healthy and so on. Don’t get me wrong, I am immensely thankful for that, but I don't need a national holiday to remind me.

Second Chances/Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

So it's that time of year again, the time of year when the weeks suddenly start flying by, the thoughts of papers and exams are constantly whirling around my head and before I know it, I haven't cooked anything in almost a week because I have actually forgotten what day it is. I usually like forgetting what day it is, because it is so often a sign of being on vacation, of relaxation and fun. Then there is the other type of forgetting what day it is which means that I start counting days based on how far away I am from a due date, and find myself having tunnel vision up until that day. It is at times like these that I accidentally make 6 pumpkin cranberry loaves and believe it to be the funniest and most exciting thing that has happened in weeks (sadly, it probably is).

Let's back track. Yesterday, I finally had the time to procrastinate, which, from the looks of my agenda, won't really be happening in the next few weeks and so, I decided to bake.

Sanity/Cinnamon Chocolate-Chip Sour Cream Cake

Sometimes I am compelled to question my sanity. I mean, I woke up at an ungodly hour yesterday morning and moseyed to the supermarket just so I could buy the ingredients to make this cake. You see the thing is, its not that I was craving sweets or chocolate or anything, but I had decided that I was going to bake a cake for my blog. So, despite papers and midterms, at 8 am I was lurking outside the supermarket waiting for the doors to open. By 10:30 piping hot deliciousness was sneaking out of my oven. I wish I could have been in my roommate’s head when she walked out of her room and there was already a cake baking. I wouldn't blame her for worrying, normal people don’t make cakes the second they roll out of bed. Except for me that is, I swear I am totally normal.

It all started on Monday, when I decided that things have been looking a little salty around here recently, so I knew it was time to bake something up. I have more or less a million recipes bookmarked on my computer, but I didn’t feel like making anything fancy or difficult. To quote my oh-so-eloquent self, “I just want to make a cake where I just throw everything into a bowl and ta-dah!”

Taking the Leap/Daring Baker's Challenge

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

"Frenchie, you are a bad bad blogger" I have repeated this over and over in my head for the past few weeks, starting about one week after my last blog post. Sorry guys, I am working on it, I promise. I even finally signed up for the upcoming Daring Bakers and Daring cooks challenges to make sure (gosh, I love deadlines) that I find even more reasons to post.

So, my heart/stomach are in jumbly knots these days. I mean, really, I don't even like rollercoasters but I feel like I am always on one. Where to begin? Well first of all, I spent a delicious and wonderful week at home, spending time with my dearest friends and my sister. Obviously, after a week of pure joy, I can't help but bawl my little heart out on the plane back to Italy. Call me fickle, but also the fact that my year in Italy is slowly starting to wind down is really irking me; aren't things just starting to get great? Shouldn't this just be the beginning?
So like I said, jumbly knots all around and luckily the Daring Bakers Challenge this week was cheesecake, which I am pretty certain is just what the doctor prescribed. Rx : Consume 1 large slice surrounded by friend's and family, to temporarily calm the effects of unruly emotions.
For this challenge the mission was to add our own creativity boost to a classic cheesecake. This was such a fun challenge for me because cheesecake was my "signature dessert" when I was little, I tried one recipe and then stuck with it, forever. Boooooorrriiinnggg. But I actually didn't realize that until I really got my mind rolling for this challenge. I ended up making a lemon-scented cheesecake with a hazelnut crust topped with orange and grapefruit segments. What I also ended up with was exquisite. Before I give you all the recipe for this gem, I want to share one last thing. Yesterday, almost out of nowhere (well as I was snapping shots of my cake for here) my mom tells me that I should find a way to post pictures and write about food on the internet. Ha. Then she tells my sister that she should encourage me to do that same. Ha. So I am having this huge internal struggle, to tell or not to tell? Right now I am kind of loving having my own space and forum to write without the incessant "suggestions" and ideas of those who have inherently given themselves the right to say whatever they want to me. We'll see, I will of course keep you all posted, as I become a decent, respectable blogger.
Citrus Hazelnut Cheesecake
makes 1, 9-inch cake

This cake really benefits from the combination of cheeses, the ricotta helps to lighten it a bit. The citrus flavors really pop thanks to the hefty amount of salt in the crust. I tried to keep the hazelnut as just a hint of flavor which leaves people wondering what that extra flavor is, I find hazelnuts to be very rich and if its presence is too strong, it really takes away from the rest of the cake.

For the crust:
• 1/2 c. toasted hazelnuts
• 10-12 large dry cookies (graham crackers work, I used an Italian kind, seeing that I am in Italy, also in terms of how many cookies, you want to end up with 2.5 c. of crust mix)
• 80 g. cold butter, in cubes.
• 1 heaping tsp. salt

~place everything in a food processor and pulse until the crumbs are fine and it all starts to come together.
~press into the bottom and slightly up the sides (which I didn't do but wish I had) of a 9-inch springform pan, and refrigerate while you make the filling.

Filling:
• 340 g fresh (if possible) ricotta
• 340g cream cheese
• 100 g mascarpone
• 170 g sugar
•4 large eggs
• 3 tbsp flour
•zest and juice of 1 lemon

Garnish:
Segments of 4 small grapefruits and 6 small oranges, if available use blood oranges.

Instructions:
~ Preheat oven to 350 with a dish of water at the bottom.
~ Cream the cheeses and the sugar together with a mixer until fluffy. Add the eggs in one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl and making sure that each one is well incorporated. Add the flour until just combined. Add the zest and juice and mix until smooth and creamy.
~ Pour this into the prepared crust.
~ Bake for about 50 minutes, until set but the center still wobbles and jiggles. Turn the oven off and let the cake sit in the hot oven for an hour to finish cooking and to slowly cool down (avoid cracks, yay). Take it out, let it cool completely and then refrigerate overnight.
~When you are ready to serve, place the citrus segments on top artistically or freehandedly, I went for the latter. You can also serve the extra fruit along side, if people are into a greater fruit to cake ratio.

Spring is Here/Berry Butter Cake

Although I have been feeling spring for a few weeks now, today is the first official day of Spring. And with a dinner party to go to, I decided to jump ahead a season and make a summer cake. It is Spring after all, the time of new beginnings, and these possibilities seem endless. I hate (slash love) to be cliche when I talk about Spring, but there is just something poetic about it. Winter blues turn turquoise, the 65 degrees that felt cold in the fall now feel just right, and waking up in the morning with the sun shining feels like pleasure rather than penance.
So to celebrate, I decided to make a summer berry cake with lemon curd filling. The first time I made this cake was in the 7th grade, Memorial Day weekend in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. I was there with my then best friend who also loved to bake and we unanimously picked this recipe out of that month's Gourmet. I don't know why, but I never forgot about this slightly pink cake; a moist spongy gem studded with raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. Today, I decided to give this recipe a face lift by slicing it in two and filling it with tart and creamy lemon curd.

It's always interesting to cook such "American" desserts for my Italian friends. Italian's are not always an easy bunch to please, they have their ways and they like to stick with them. In some ways, I would almost say that making such a sinful dessert for them may leave me with a disadvantage, I have finally made it onto the facebook message roster, it seems that people might actually (gasp) want to hang out with me. So what am I doing? Well I guess I am just doing what I love, following my heart when I feel comfortable doing so. And also, I have an advantage, as an Italian I know that even the finest most high brow Italian could never say no to this cake. Just look at it, isn't it pretty?

Notes:
• I used an 11" round pan instead or the rectangular one suggested, it does lead to thinner layers but I like round cakes.
• I also could have easily doubled the curd recipe, it would have definitely given the cake an extra something.
• Make the curd first and let it cool in the fridge while you assemble the cake.
• Make sure the cake is completely cooled before you cut it in half, if not it will fall apart.

Lemon Curd (from Martha Stewart Living, January 2002)

• 3 large egg yolks
• Zest of 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice, (2 lemons)
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and cut into pieces

Combine yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar in a small saucepan. Whisk to combine. Set over medium heat, and stir constantly with a wooden spoon, making sure to stir sides and bottom of pan. Cook until mixture is thick enough to coat back of wooden spoon, 5 to 7 minutes.

Transfer mixture to a medium bowl. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd to avoid a skin from forming; wrap tightly. Let cool; refrigerate until firm and chilled, at least 1 hour.

Store, refrigerated in an airtight container, up to 2 days.

Three Berry Butter Cake (from Gourmet, July 2000)

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 3 large eggs at room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
• 6 cups mixed berries (1 3/4 ponds) such as raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries
• 2 tablespoons confectioners sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 13- by 9- by 2-inch metal baking pan, then line bottom with wax paper and grease paper.

Heat butter with cream in a small saucepan over low heat until melted, then cool.

Beat eggs, granulated sugar, and salt with an electric mixer on high speed until mixture is thick, pale, and forms a ribbon when beaters are lifted, about 5 minutes with a standing mixer or about 12 minutes with a handheld. Add zest, baking powder, and vanilla and mix on low speed until blended.

Add 1 1/4 cups flour and half of butter mixture and mix on low speed until blended. Mix in remaining butter and 1 1/4 cups flour in same manner. Increase speed to medium and beat 1 minute with a standing mixer or 2 minutes with a handheld, or until batter is thick and sticky. Add berries and carefully fold in with a rubber spatula until barely combined. (Raspberries will begin to fall apart, and batter will look slightly pink.) Spoon batter into baking pan, gently smoothing top. Bake in middle of oven until springy to the touch and a tester inserted into center comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool completely in pan on a rack.

Run a knife around edge of cake, then invert rack over cake and flip cake onto it. Remove wax paper and reinvert onto a platter.

Just before serving, dust with confectioners sugar.