Sunday, November 7, 2010

Fall Harvest

It's finally feeling like Fall. I've been waiting all summer for this. Somehow apple desserts feel more appropriate in Fall than in the Summer, but I always want them in Summer. I guess it's the usual wanting what you can't have (or didn't used to be able to have before mass refrigerated warehouse storage).

In celebration of first inklings that the calendar isn't totally off, I decided it was safe to make an apple dessert this week. Apple pie takes too long for the time I have available these days, and applesauce cake requires applesauce, which I also didn't have, nor really the time to go out to buy some. I happened to have a very large bowl full of beautiful Fuji Apples that aren't getting eaten as fast as they used to since my older son is away in Indiana for school.

As usual, I doubled the recipe to accommodate our group of approximately 16 people. So I grabbed two apples, hoping they would be enough, but thinking I might need a 3rd for my double Apple Spice Cake. After washing, drying, quartering, coring and dicing the first apple, I found that not only is my apple bowl large, so are my apples! A single apple was large enough to create a double recipe of Apple Spice Cake. This recipe was SO easy. One bowl, no mixer, no eggs, no butter. Flour, buttermilk, oil, apples, spices, nuts, stir. That was just about it. Bake, cool, turn out of the pan, sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving. Done!

Of course now I'll be craving Strawberry Shortcake . . .

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Boooooonana Bread

Normally, in preparation for Halloween, my Sunday Dinner friends and I carve pumpkins and then have a very informal contest to choose our favorite.

The most memorable one from the past (maybe the first year that I was involved) was a pumpkin carved by our friend "Jim S.". "Jim" is a big fan of 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000' (well, was anyway, as I'm pretty sure it's no longer on the air). The premise of the show is that one astronaut of the team is banished because of his annoying personality. He must spend his banishment watching old films with his homemade robot friends. So most of the show is actually viewing the old films, just like you might do on TCM, but in the foreground is the silhouette of the some theater seat backs and the heads of the astronaut and his robots. Throughout the movie they make comments and jokes about what is going on on the screen, similar to the rude person you might find at a movie theatre.

So, "Jim" carved the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 silhouette, with the screen area cut out entirely. He then inserted a sheet of translucent plastic into the pumpkin to cover the screen area. On the back of the pumpkin he cut a round hole large enough to fit the lens of a movie projector. When he turned the projector ON we were able to watch the movie "Frankenstein" on the 'screen' of the jack o'lantern! It was incredible!

Well, I have no pumpkin carving stories to share from this year. Because Halloween was on a Sunday, the previous Sunday was too far away from Halloween to do the carving at Sunday Dinner. And also, since Halloween was on Sunday, we actually didn't have Sunday Dinner so that any children could 'trick or treat' and the rest of us would be free to man our bowls of candy at the door. So instead of baking for Sunday Dinner, I just baked for us. A couple of bananas needed a job, so on Halloween I baked some Boooooonana Bread (insert groan here).

I couldn't even hand out banana bread to Trick-or-Treaters since we have the perfect Halloween driveway. Dark and down a steep hill where no small child, and no sane parent, is willing to walk just for a small piece of candy and the knowledge that the steep hill must be climbed UP afterward.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Just the Right Weekend

for Lemon Bars

It was a busy weekend. My husband went out of town for business, my son had an out of town marching band competition followed by the Homecoming Dance, and I, I had midterms . . . studying for HTML and trying to do an impossible Photoshop project. If I don't have a lot of time to bake, and I don't want to buy something sub par, my fallback is some sort of bar cookie or bar dessert.

My original plan was Raspberry Streusel Bars. When I opened up my trusty Joy of Cooking I found Lemon Bars on the same page - yum! I thought maybe I'd make some of each, but then I took off my crazy hat and realized that 2 desserts does not mesh with Midterm Weekend.

Which to choose? Well, I did have some home grown lemons (not grown at my home), and my husband is not fond of citrus. So since the rest of my friends LOVE lemon bars, and Morris was out of town, Lemon Bars it was.

Well, normally I would make 2 trays for the normal 20 people (minus those who don't DO lemon). But this Sunday we were only slated to have 12-13 people. One tray and have just barely enough, or 2 trays to allow for seconds and doggie bags? I decided on 1, since none of us really need extra dessert. Well good thing I did - even though I was pretty sure I had enough lemons to probably make 2 batches (with a back up of REALemon for those last couple teaspoons of juice if necessary), turns out I had just barely enough for one batch. And then, the next day, I get a call to let me know that it will be a particularly small week, only 6 of us . . .

So, guess who has some spare lemon bars?

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Lianne's 13th Birthday

Every Sunday (well almost, ~49 out of 52 anyway) I have dinner with a group of friends who have become a 2nd family. My husband and I have been participating in this event for about 20 years! For almost 15 of those years I have been bringing homemade desserts as our contribution to the feast shared by 12 to 20 people (sometimes a few more).

Usually I pick what to make for dessert. But it is the group's tradition that on the Sunday we celebrate someone's birthday, the birthday person gets to choose the menu. One of our youngest members, Lianne, had her 13th birthday last Friday. Her growing maturity lead her to not only pick a menu that included salmon and broccoli, but to have an alternate menu (Caesar Salad instead of broccoli) in case the weather was too hot to cook vegetables. How thoughtful!

For her dessert she chose Sosi Cakes, as Blondies are known in the host's home. This was good luck for me as any kind of bar cookie is fast to make, and I had a lot of homework to take care of last weekend.

This is also a great dessert to make if you need to take advantage of early morning hours before the rest of the house is awake. The butter does not need to be pre-softened, so you can start as soon as you are awake enough to be safe around a stove. The batter is stirred, no cake mixers required, so there isn't the risk of waking up anyone who has the luxury of sleeping-in on a Sunday morning. The Blondies were out of the oven and cooling off by 8:30am and I still had the whole day for other tasks!

You can find this recipe in the 75th Anniversary Edition (and some older editions) of the Joy of Cooking, under "Blondies". Enjoy!