Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

I had several apples sitting (more like rotting) in the fridge and I wanted to make Gmom's Jewish Apple Cake, but I didn't have the recipe or the right kind of pan. Instead, I decided to make this recipe.

The cake takes a few hours. About 20 minutes for prep, 1 hour and 15 minutes for baking, and a couple hours for cooling. It was a 3-day weekend. Trust me, I had the time.

Here's what you are gonna need:

3 cups of chopped apples
1 cup of walnuts
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
cinnamon
3 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups of veggie oil
vanilla extract

for topping:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk

STEP ONE: Preheat oven to 350.


STEP TWO: Get pan ready. Grease with Crisco (80% disgusting, 20% hand moisturizing) and dust with flour.



STEP THREE: Prepare the apples. I used about 2 and 1/2 apples. Peel and chop.


I assigned the job of peeling and chopping to my sous chef. I'm glad he did a great job, I wasn't sure he could see out from under all that hair.


STEP FOUR: Combine dry ingredients. Mix together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.



STEP FIVE: Get the wet ingredients together. Mix the eggs and then add the sugar and vegetable oil.




An exciting video, I know. For some reason, I just realized I can take video. It may be a blog changing revelation!

STEP SIX: Add dry ingredients slowly. It should seem more like a cookie dough than a cake batter when you are done.


STEP SEVEN: Stir in walnuts, apples and vanilla extract.


STEP EIGHT: Pour into pan.


STEP NINE: Bake at 350 for an 1 hr. 15 minutes.

STEP TEN: When only a few minutes of baking time are left, start preparing the glaze. Combine 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of milk. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes to form a syrup.



STEP ELEVEN: Remove cake from oven and immediately pour syrup on top.


You might want to do this on top of foil as to avoid this problem:


It takes a little while for the syrup/glaze to soak into the cake. Let it cool before removing from pan. I put a plate on top and flipped the cake over. Then flipped it again. Technically, this cake is served upside down.


Slice and serve it up with a little (or a lot of) whipped cream!




This is really good stuff. I love the parts where the syrup has sunken into the crispy outer layer making a super sweet crunch.

Tapioca Pudding

I've always loved tapioca pudding. Creamy with the texture of little pearls! You can't beat this rich diner classic!

Never made tapioca pudding before, but it came out pretty good. I've read online that "minute" or instant tapioca isn't the best to use for this, but it's what I had in the pantry and it worked just fine!

Here's the ingredient list:

(makes 4 servings)

3 tablespoons tapioca
2 and 3/4 cups of milk (I used skim)
1 egg, scrambled well
1/3 cup of sugar
sprinkle of cinnamon
vanilla extract

1. Combine all ingredients except vanilla and cinnamon. Let sit for 5 minutes with no heat.


2. Heat on medium until the mixture reaches a full boil.


3. Remove from heat. Stir in a teaspoon of vanilla and sprinkle in some cinnamon.


You can serve this warm or cooled.

Pancakes

I don't think there is anything better than Saturday morning pancakes. Except for Saturday morning BLUEBERRY and BANANA pancakes.

I usually want pancakes but don't want to make them because it can get a little messy. Using the food processor for this seemed to make clean up a little easier.

This recipe made about 7 pancakes, good for two or three people!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
dash of salt
teaspoon of vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons of oil
1 egg

1 chopped banana and some fresh blueberries

It doesn't get much easier than this: put all the ingredients (except banana and blueberries) in the food processor until it's well blended.


Pour onto pan or griddle. It takes a little bit of "know-how" or sheer luck to get the perfect temperature. I like medium or medium-low.

Dot with blueberries and chopped banana.

SMILE!

Flip when the pancake looks dry around the edges and has bubbles on top.


This is the best maple syrup you will find at the grocery store:


Serve with coffee and a little extra fruit. And syrup, of course!



These were perfect! I really liked the combination of the banana and blueberry. Nice and fresh!

Recipe adapted from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Oatmeal-Pancakes-II/Detail.aspx

Bok Bok Wingz

I eat meat, sometimes enjoy spicy food, sometimes eat fried food, married a man from NC, like biker-bars and cheap beer, I'll occasionally watch NASCAR on tv and sometimes I'll sing along to the country station on the radio. All sources point to: EATING CHICKEN WINGS!

It's the ultimate white trash food, but it's SO good. Brings back memories of my favorite dive bar in High Point, NC. It's a good way to get in some veggies since wings go great with celery, carrots, ranch and BEER. All of which contain some plant material.

Just for Marianna: "Some people like ranch on their wings.... are YOU one of those people?"


You're gonna need this stuff:

wings, 16 pieces: drumettes or smaller wing parts (whatever they are called).

dry ingredients: flour, paprika, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cayenne

a crazy amount of frying oil

butter and hot sauce to make yummy wing sauce


1. Prepare wing pieces. If they came as whole wings, chop into drumettes and lil wings. Also, get your fryer out.


2. Coat in dry ingredients. Use 3/4 cup flour and a dash of everything else.



3. Put in the fridge for a few minutes. I don't know why, but the recipe I used included this part. Not sure if the wait is necessary.

4. FRY EM! I used the fryer that Angie got for us as a wedding present. Temperature was set at 360 degrees and I let the wings fry for 10 minutes. After they have browned, let wings drain so they don't get soggy.



5. Toss in wing sauce. Wing sauce= 1/3 cup butter and 1/3 cup Louisiana hot sauce.


6. Serve with celery, carrots, ranch and beer!



Very nice!

Not quite homemade, crock-less french onion soup

Don't know where my hankerin for french onion soup came from. It's about 100 degrees here and soup doesn't usually sound good. It must be a salt craving.

French onion soup= carbs + salt + fat. A delicious combination.

After I bought the ingredients for the french onion soup, Royall told me our crocks were broken. Don't know how our french onion soup crocks were broken, seeing as we NEVER used them.... interesting.

Anyway, I decided to make it in the cast iron skillet.

First, I made the soup. Empty can, add water. Pretty easy. Making your own soup base for this isn't hard, but I was feeling lazy today.


Next I added the bread. French bread that I left out for the day and then toasted briefly in the toaster oven.


Put slices of provolone on top. Classic french onion soup uses gueyere, but that was too pricey for our new budget.


I then put the whole deal into the oven with the broiler on high. It only took a few minutes for the cheese to bubble and brown.






That's it! Pretty good stuff. Plus, it only took about 10 minutes to make!

Laundry Soap

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EAT THIS!

That pretty pink stuff is not strawberry pudding or strawberry-anything for that matter. It's home made laundry soap! I just had to show off my insanity/DIY-focus/frugal skills.

I didn't want to spend the 5 bucks for laundry soap because I am THAT cheap. Instead I bought a bar of pink zote soap (about a dollar), in the back of my mind remembering that I had seen a recipe to make your own laundry soap on the internet somewhere.

Here's the recipe:

1/2 bar of zote, grated
water, 1 gallon=16 cups
1 cup baking soda

First, grate the zote and put in large pot with enough water to cover it.

Heat on medium/low until melted.

Add 16 cups of warm water and remove from heat.

Pour in 1 cup of baking soda and stir until dissolved.

Transfer into container. I used an old laundry soap container.


Here are pictures from the process:

The ingredients:


Melting the soap:


After adding water and baking soda:


Quite possibly the hardest part: pouring into container for storage.



FYI: Shake mixture before using. Use 1/2 cup for regular load and 1 cup for badly soiled loads of laundry.

Let's do the math. I'm pretty sure the soap was $0.89 and I already had the cup of baking soda at home. This recipe makes about a gallon, which is 16 cups or 32 (1/2 cup) loads. $0.89 divided by 32 is 0.02781 cents which I will round up to 3 CENTS A LOAD! Not bad, even taking into account the 15 minutes it took to make and the clean-up of the soapy dishes.

So I know it is cheap. The real question is: DOES IT WORK?!

I'll post tomorrow how well it works. I have a load of towels in the wash right now! Hopefully it will work despite the hard water here in Arizona.