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So, this cake. I made this cake for my boss and his family. His wife is currently going through chemo treatment (they expect her to make a full recovery) and a bunch of us in the office decided to put together a care package of food for them after her latest round. Not only was I happy to do this for my wonderful boss, but it allowed me to do my favorite type of baking - bake and release, as Dorie Greenspan calls it.

The only instruction I was given was to make something apple. I did not really have any idea what I wanted to make, except that I knew I didn’t want to mess around with pie or anything that required rolling out dough. After a food blog search I found a recipe on Serious Eats that was a modified version of Dorie Greenspan’s Swedish Visiting Cake with apples. Perfect. I printed this recipe at work and left it on the printer. It did me a lot of good there.

Since I am sometimes super lazy about the dumbest things, I decided to just use Dorie’s recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours and add sliced apples, instead of searching and reprinting the recipe at home. Whatever. Don’t judge me.

Here is what Dorie has to say about this cake, because, who am I kidding here, I cannot say it better myself…

“This cake is thin and light with a golden sugar crust and an interior that is soft, chewy, moist and reminiscent of cakes made with almond paste. Although it is amply satisfying in its plainness, I upped the flavor just a little by adding vanilla and almond extract.”

Seriously, this cake could not have been easier to make. The batter comes together literally in minutes, in one bowl, no mixer needed, no waiting for things to come to room temperature. The makings of a recipe I like. Dorie calls for this to be baked in a 9 inch cast iron skillet. Problem: I do not own said 9 inch cast iron skillet. Solution: I own cake pans or I own 10 inch cast iron skillet.

I went with solution “I own cake pans", for no particular reason. Next time, I will try solution “I own 10 inch cast iron skillet". BECAUSE - this mother f’ing cake took FORever to bake. Okay, not forever, but like double the time the recipe called for. That becomes a problem when I am trying to fit this cake in after making dinner and before getting to the gym. I suspect part of the problem was that the cake pan I used was too small and maybe the addition of the sliced apples threw this cake for a loop. It just couldn’t handle being baked with apples, it didn’t know what to do with itself.

Truth be told, I made this cake twice. The first cake was a real hot mess. It was in the oven at 350F in an approx. 8.5 inch cake pan for an hour and was still totally raw in the middle. I had to abandon this cake and leave it in the good(?) hands of Nick while I went to the gym. My instructions were “take the cake out when it is not wet in the middle and don’t ruin it". Yeah. I came home to an undercooked cake which was sitting inside a turned off oven. Huh? Okay, let’s not even go there.

Let’s make a long story short and say that after some stomping, pouting, and removal of cake from pan and into garbage, a second cake was made.

This time I wised up and used a larger 9.5 inch cake pan. This worked out much better in that after an hour of baking, I had a cake that I could actually give to someone. A cake that was actually the consistency of cake and not cold lumpy gravy. Still, this second cake baked for double the 25-30 minutes Dorie calls for AND about 20 minute in when I saw it was not even close to done I turned the heat up to 375F. I am perplexed.

The silver lining in this Swedish cake saga is that at least I got to taste cake #1 a.k.a hot mess. There were some edge pieces that were acceptable to eat, and they were freaking delicious.

Cake #2 came out looking fabulous, way better than it’s deformed hot mess of a sister. It was totally cooked through and nicely golden brown (I loosely covered it with foil near the end). The top became a puffy sugary crust that sparkled with sugar but the inside was still all moist and cake like and the apples got nice and soft.

I will for sure be making this again for my own consumption. Maybe with apples or maybe not. I would like to try it without apples to see if they were the culprit of my baking time issues. The more I think about it, the more likely that seems.

The recipe that is posted after the jump is Dorie’s original recipe from the book. The cake that I baked was modified. This pretty much entailed not adding almonds, and adding sliced apples of the Pink Lady variety instead. I know, I’m a visionary, you don’t have to tell me.

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If you are coming here expecting to find Carrot, Green Apple & Mint Salad, well, it’s not here. Even though this week’s Craving Ellie recipe was chosen by one of my favorite bloggers (A Singleton in the Kitchen), who also happens to live in the same city as me, this salad just wasn’t our thing. My apologies to Jessica - please don’t look me up and beat me, but please look me up and bring me some of your delicious looking baked goods, ribbons and all!

I have been doing A LOT of cooking lately, and not so much baking, so I decided to do a rewind this week and make Ellie’s Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti. If you are unfamiliar, biscotti are Italian cookies and their name means “baked twice". You bake the dough the first time in a log, then you cool it, slice it and bake the slices a second time to dry them out. The longer they bake the second time, the harder the cookies will be. They are the perfect mate to a nice hot cup of coffee.

These were easy to make. The dough is a very stiff and sticky cookie dough. The only sort of issue I had was that after the first baking of 25 minutes they were still very raw in the middle. I did not realize this until I sliced them, so I just had to do a longer bake the second time. I am really not sure if it was supposed to be that way or not, but it worked out in the end.

Overall these biscotti were pretty good, I enjoyed them even more after they had sat for a day. I like that they weren’t rock hard and the combo of chocolate, cherries, and almonds is always delicious. If I make them again I would add more cherries, decrease the chocolate, and put in some almond extract to get more of an almond flavor.

I am not really sure what the fat and calories are in a normal biscotti, but these babies have 10 grams of fat and 230 calories per cookie. So they are not exactly guilt free (at least in my mind), but they are certainly not a diet buster either. And they are made with half whole wheat pastry flour so the calories are not totally empty.

You can find the recipe for these cookies here.

Here is my log. I measured this to be 10 x 3, so I don’t think my under doneness had to do with the size. You can see how chock full of delicious goodness it is:

Here it is out of the oven:

Semi raw biscotti. I think I had to bake them for another 25 minutes, and I tested them this time with a cake tester!

Do you know that the Irish would carve turnips into jack-o-lanterns instead of pumpkins on Halloween? I just heard that on the History channel.

Pumpkin is not one of my favorite ingredients, I don’t hate it, I just don’t love it. Though I have been more open to using and trying things with pumpkin lately. So I was excited to make these muffins. Although I am always be happy to try a new muffin recipe, especially an Ellie Krieger one. This recipe is a pretty standard low fat muffin recipe. The fats are canola oil, eggs, and low fat buttermilk. And the actual flavor of the muffin is very much like a spice cake with a hint of pumpkin.

I did make a few changes to the original recipe, which can be found here.

• I used 100% all-purpose flour
• I added 50% more of all the spices since some were saying these were bland
• I only used 2 tbsp of molasses since that is all I had left
• I left out the pumpkin seeds because I did not want to buy them just for this
• I added in a handful of ground flax seed to the batter

Overall I really enjoyed these muffins. Ellie’s muffin recipes have not disappointed me yet. There was a nice flavor to the muffin with the cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg, though I think there is room to improve by changing the amounts. It was also pretty moist and did not have the gross gummy dense texture that some low fat muffins can have.

I think that some golden raisins in the muffin might be good, I will try that next time. I also loved 24carrots idea on the Tell All to substitute maple syrup for the molasses. I may also try replacing one of the eggs with another cup of pumpkin and see how that goes. This would make it healthier as well as allow me to use up a whole small can of pumpkin instead of only half a can.

Bottom line: These muffins were very good, I will definitely make them again and try different variations.

Great pick by Amanda of Oddball Oven Mitt for this week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly.

I think I am the last person to jump on this bandwagon, though this is certainly a good bandwagon to jump on. I have read so many accounts of bloggers making this famed Baked brownie, even one including thinly sliced bacon on top. (yes my friends, bacon.) For those of you who live under a rock, Baked is a well known bakery in Brooklyn who took the food world by storm with their critically acclaimed brownie recipe, among other delicious looking confections. I believe it was named best brownie or something of that ilk by America’s Test Kitchen, and it was one of Oprah’s favorite things. So you get the point.

I finally received the Baked: New Frontiers in Baking book for my birthday this year from Nick’s sister and her husband (thanks Peter and Andi ), and the first thing I made was of course the brownie.

I decided to wait to make these with my official brownie taste tester and lover of all things chocolate, Nick’s 8 year old son. I may have mentioned before that he is an infuriatingly picky eater, however, he will scarf down any brownie or chocolate baked good I can produce. And even better, he truly enjoys and wants to bake with me.

Even before these were baked, the rich chocolaty batter got 2 thumbs up. And really, how could this not be good, what with 2 sticks of butter, 11 ounces of chocolate, and 2 cups of sugar. Additionally, this was the first use of my batch of homemade vanilla extract, which I will post about eventually.

The verdict from the brownie expert: This was definitely in the top 3 brownies we have ever made and the rest of our family and friends really seemed to enjoy them. However, I will have to say that Dorie Greenspan’s French Brownies are still my favorite and, in my opinion, top these. Though the comparison may not be fair since these recipes yield two very different brownies.

The only problem that I had with this recipe was that I had to bake it almost double the amount of time called for until I got the moist crumb I was looking for. After the 30 minutes per the recipe, my tester was just plain moist and just not cooked at all in the middle. Not sure what happened here.

So does the Baked brownie deserve all the acclaim that it gets? I will say yes. It is a quality recipe that produces a very traditional tasting brownie. I would be interested to actually taste one from the bakery to see if mine differed much from one made by the masters.

You can find the recipe here or buy the book.

You may recall some weeks ago that I posted about strawberry bread that I made that was loaded with butter and marscapone cheese. Yum! It was delicious.

Now I bring you strawberry muffins. These are not nearly as rich and delicious as the strawberry bread. However, the good news is that I can actually eat more than just a sliver without gaining 10 pounds.

I bought a huge container of strawberries and I had to use them up before they turned on me. I had seen this recipe from Jen at Savor the Thyme a while back and it popped in my head as the perfect way to put these berries to good use.

These were pretty tasty, and I also think they are the healthiest muffins I have made in a while. They were a tad dense and not as tender as I would have preferred, but they were a good low fat breakfast muffin.

Since I used Jen’s recipe almost as written, I am going to send you over to her site for it. The only change I made was that I did not boil the strawberries down before adding them to the batter, I just added fresh cut berries. You can find the recipe here for Strawberry Muffins.

Applesauce Spice Bars. I can’t say that this is something I would have chosen to make on my own. However, as is the case with most Dorie Greenspan recipes, they were quite good. This cake was spiced with the usual suspects of cinnamon and all spice, and rounded out with a nice splash of brandy. The cake could really not have been more moist, and the glaze, oh boy. The glaze was by far the best part. Just combine yourself the right amount of sugar and fat and you have liquid happiness. I let my bars cool 100% completely before I made the glaze so I would have a nice thick icing. Some of it still did seep into the cake, but most of it set quickly and stayed on the top where it belonged.

This cake really reminded me of a muffin, in the process of making it and in the texture and taste. I am sure some people did bake them into muffins and they probably came out wonderful. I might try to lighten this recipe up in the future and make some healthier muffins with it. I really loved the chunks of apples and nuts, and I even enjoyed the raisins in this which can be hit or miss for me. Nick suggested that I make these again during the holidays and make a boozed up version of the glaze to top it with. Sounds good to me.

Nick seemed to enjoy these a lot, and I hope the rest of his coworkers do as well, as I am dumping a huge pan of them in his office this morning. They must get out of the house. I am so untrustworthy around anything sweet that I bake myself. Even if I don’t really like something, I will still eat it because it’s there and it’s home baked by me.

This was a super Tuesdays with Dorie pick by Karen of Something Sweet. You can find the recipe at Karen’s blog or on page 117-118 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie is Brownie Buttons which can be found on page 106-107 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. They may just look like some normal mini brownies, but they are not. These fabulous bite size brownies are bursting with rich and bright flavors. The secret is…orange zest.

This is a fairly basic brownie recipe. Butter, sugar, chocolate, flour, eggs, and vanilla. Then Dorie adds a nice brightness with some orange zest, I used the zest of almost a whole orange so the orange flavor was very pronounced. Though she does say that the zest is optional, I think it is what sets these apart from just a regular brownie. I love the orange and chocolate combination, it reminds me of the chocolate cointreau souffles that Nick makes.

I made these to bring to the beach for a weekend vacation, as a treat for Nick’s 7 year old son. Since he is pretty much the pickiest eater on the planet (thanks mostly to the fact that he is continually fed junk and fast food when he is not with us) I opted out of the white chocolate topping. I actually wanted there to be a chance that he would eat these, and the orange zest was already worrying me. Good news, he did like them and had no complaints about the orange flavor. Since I was making them for little taste buds, I also decided to use semi sweet and milk chocolate instead of bittersweet.

I scanned the P&Q, but did not see anything about the weird thing that happened to my brownies. As I was removing them from the silicone pan, I realized that they had all caved in from the bottom. They were nice and fluffy on top, but the bottoms had sunk, but it was more like they were sucked in from above. What in the name of baking science went on in my muffin pan? Anyone???

Great TWD pick this week by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen. Hey, maybe she can solve the case of my mysterious reverse cave in brownies.

So a few weeks ago I posted about some yummy lemon blueberry muffins. This week I thought I would shake things up a bit and post about some orange blueberry muffins. I know, I’m crraaaazy. I like to live life in the fast lane.

These Orange Berry Muffins are the very first recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. I don’t really know why that is relevant, but, something has got to be first and this is it.

They top the list of favorite muffins that I have made in recent times. I absolutely loved the orange blueberry combo and the orange flavor was a nice change up from the standard lemon zest that I usually add to a berry muffin.

These muffins were really tender and moist, with a great crumb. Not surprising since this is a Dorie recipe. They were on the lower end of sweet, which to my surprise I enjoyed. There is only 1/3 cup of sugar in the batter. The rest of the sweetness comes from some honey and fresh orange juice.

For this recipe I used the zest of 2 oranges but the juice of only 1 orange (about 1/4 cup). This created a lovely orange flavor that was not overpowering.

I used 6 oz of blueberries which is a standard small container. I think these could stand to have a bit more berries, a full 8 ounces would probably be perfect.

If you are looking for a way to use up your bounty of blueberries, this is a great recipe to try. I just scored blueberries for 99 cents per pint, so you can bet your ass I will be making these again really soon.

Full recipe after the jump.

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Well, they don’t look like much, but this is yet another winner from my girl Ellie Kreiger. I made these muffins for this week’s Craving Ellie in my Belly, which was chosen by Leanne of Enjoying My Favorite Things.

So, are these muffins or cupcakes? I am not really sure what the difference is, but I didn’t frost them, so I am going with muffins. Though I think if you did make the lemony cream cheese frosting that is a part of this recipe they could easily pass as cupcakes.

And for a cupcake or a muffin, these are quite healthy and low fat. The only fat in the batter is 1/4 cup of canola oil and 2 eggs. In addition, there is only 3/4 cup of sugar. Not bad at all. Even with the cream cheese frosting, there is only 10 grams of fat and 236 calories per serving.

I was pleasantly surprised at how moist these are. Like really moist. I don’t think they taste low fat at all, and they don’t have that denseness and chewiness that is often associated with low fat baking. I don’t know how they compare to full fat carrot cake because I very rarely eat it. The actual carrot flavor is very subtle here and the main flavors are the cinnamon and nutmeg.

Besides the semi annoying task of finely grating the carrots, this is a super easy and pretty standard muffin recipe. You can whip this up in 10 minutes, and they bake up in about 20 minutes.

I will definitely be making these again, and I give a big thank you to Leannne for picking something that I love that I would never have chosen to make on my own.

You can find the recipe here, or on page 284-85 of The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life by Ellie Krieger.

[There’s a hole in this cake]

This week’s Tuesday’s with Dorie is Classic Banana Bundt Cake. A great pick by Mary of The Food Librarian. You can find the recipe on Mary’s blog or on page 190 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

I really enjoyed this cake. It’s nothing dramatically out of this world unbelievable, but it is a solid, easy to make cake, which is something that everyone needs a few of in their repertoire. It is a great dessert to bring to a party or give away as a gift or a welcome to the neighborhood type of thing. And it will feed an army!

I made this cake with my sister while I was visiting my family in NY over the weekend. Finally, some people to share my baked goods with! We enjoyed this cake on Saturday night after a yummy dinner of burgers on the grill with my homemade rolls. Nick made his famous hamburgers as well as the Triple S burger which my dad had just seen in the newspaper. It was a burger of freshly ground short ribs, sirloin, and skirt steak. Do I really need to tell you all that it was delicious?

Anyway, back to the cake. My cake came out moist and delicious and surprisingly the banana flavor was not overwhelming. It was a hit with the whole family. I think a handful of chocolate chips would be fabulous in this cake, and I am sure that some of my fellow bakers did just that.

Even though I tented it after a 1/2 hour, it still got a bit browner than I would have liked. Fear not though, because it’s ugliness was covered up quite nicely with a lemon vanilla glaze.

In an effort to lighten this up a bit, I subbed one of the sticks of butter for 1/4 cup of canola oil, and I used fat free Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. I suppose it may have been even tastier if I had made it as written, but really, this cake was so good the way I made it do I really need all that extra fat? I don’t think so.

This was yummy in my tummy with a nice cup of coffee and the company of my mom and sister.

There may have been a well of glaze in the middle of the cake that flowed out after I cut the first piece, and we may have spooned generous amounts of that glaze all over our cake. We may have.

Full recipe after the jump

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