Well. Where to start here  . . . the other day I asked my DH if, when he visited Costco, would he please look for any summer fruit. I’m weary of apples and pears. I’m eager for plums to come in since I want to make that New York Times’ #1 requested recipe – a Purple Plum Torte. But plums certainly aren’t in season yet. When he returned he had a big tray of peaches. As hard as rocks, but about 13 or 14 of them. Anxious as he was, he ate one the next day. It was not sweet at all and he could hardly get it down. He thought we’d end up with the entire tray of unripe fruit. But I just let that box sit out on the kitchen counter, the base cradling each individual peach, for about 4 days or so. And sure enough, all the peaches ripened beautifully.  And, as you know with such things, every single one of them ripened the same day. So, I needed to do something with them. We ate a couple, a gave two of them to a friend, but I still had about 9 of them. I used 8 (just a little over 3 pounds) for this dessert.

Over the years I’ve been somewhat unsuccessful with peach cobblers or crisps. I’m finicky when it comes to what I like. One day a few weeks ago we visited a new restaurant in our town and after a nice dinner, we ordered their fruit crisp. My usual question to the waiter is: “Is is really sweet?” Usually they say yes, or fairly so, or something similar, but I try it anyway. And am usually disappointed because most restaurants load them up with too much sugar for my palette. Last summer I recall that I made a peach cobbler – I think it was The Pioneer Woman’s version with a delicious maple syrup enhanced whipped cream. It was good, but still didn’t meet with my dream of a perfect peach crisp.

You see, I like a really crispy crust. What I really want is my mother’s Crisp Apple Pudding but made with peaches. I’ve tried using that recipe, but because peaches have so much fluid in them, it always ends up soggy and never crispy enough. The flour-based topping in that recipe just ends up like gum on top of the peaches. Sigh.

Therefore, this time around, I was on a detective mission. First I went to my resource – Eat Your Books, that website where I have all my cookbooks listed and I just put in my search request and it tells me which cookbooks I own contain a recipe. Well, the list was long – I think there were about 35 versions of Peach Crisp including a few in my barbecue cookbooks, books I’d probably not have looked in for peach recipes! Pulling cookbooks off the shelves, I looked at them. Eliminated all of them made with oatmeal. Not my thing. Didn’t want to mix peaches and blueberries or rhubarb, although there were plenty of those too. America’s Test Kitchen had more than one recipe, but I went to my bookshelf and pulled off the TV Show cookbook I have and read the blurb. The test kitchen chefs had determined a variety of different things about peach crisp – that using all brown sugar was overpowering. Using all white sugar lacked character. So they used half and half. That keeping the topping chilled until just before sprinkling it on top helped make the topping crunchy. That sounded good to me. And although they noted that most peach crisps gave off a lot of watery juice, they preferred the juice without adding cornstarch or flour to the peaches.

Their combination involved pulsing flour, sugar, spices and butter in the food processor (briefly), then adding in some nuts (they used pecans, I wanted walnuts). They felt that combination made the best chemistry for a crisp top. And they added a small amount of sugar to the peaches, but also some lemon zest and lemon juice (that was different). All sounded good on paper. So I put it to the test. It was very easy to make. Just be sure to peel the fruit – I didn’t, a mistake – when baked the peel is kind of stringy, unappetizing  and hard to cut, even though the peaches were almost fuzz-less.

I did have to make this in a larger baking dish – they suggested a 9-inch pie plate. Well, there was no way it would fit! Three pounds of fruit nearly overflowed the pie plate without the topping. And since I doubled the topping, I really did need a bigger dish. But, it was fantastic. I think I may start a new thing here on my blog – at the bottom of each posting, before the pdfs and the recipe, I’m going to tell you in straight talk what I liked and didn’t like about it. So here goes:

What I liked: it had the perfect balance of sweet and tart for me! The contrast of the tart fruit (because it had lemon juice on it, and very little sugar) and the topping (which was sweet with the brown and white sugar combo) was delicious. The chewy nuts added a great texture boost to me. I pulsed them a bit too long (a caution) so they were smaller than expected. Loved the crunchy topping – I actually doubled the topping and I should have baked it a little longer at the higher temp because of that since the center didn’t quite get crunchy enough, which was my fault. Next time I’ll make sure about that.

What I didn’t like: the next day, after being refrigerated, the topping was soggy. All the juice was absorbed into the topping. Alas, there’s not much to be done about that. But it tasted great for breakfast with a bit of milk and fat-free half and half poured over the top). When I served it for dessert the first night, there was a lot of juice in the baking dish – it seemed like too much, but it tasted wonderful – syrupy and tart with the lemon juice. If you really don’t like the juiciness, add about a tablespoon or so of flour or cornstarch to the raw peaches. Maybe the best advice is to make this and eat it all up the first day!

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A year ago: GF Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
Two years ago: Celery, Date, Walnut and Pecorino Salad
Four years ago: Apricot Ice Cream

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Hopefully I’ll have some photos up in a day or two. As this is posted we’ve just arrived in Colorado, where we’re visiting with our friends Sue and Lynn who moved there last year.

I’m taking my new iPad with me, and I hope I’ll be able to upload photos and write a bit while we’re there. My trusty camera will be with me everywhere, so I’ll have some scenery to show you.

Years ago, I lived in Denver. It’s a beautiful city. Our friends live in Morrison, a foothills suburb SW of Denver, in the pine trees.

So, stay tuned for some travel photos.

A year ago: Mini-Appetizer Wontons (from Trader Joe’s)

Four  years ago: Chicken with Artichokes & Olives

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A week or so ago I attended a cooking class all about summer salads. And oh, was this one fantastic. On hot summer nights (we haven’t had any of those yet) this would make a great dinner. The only thing you have to cook are the shrimp (it can be grilled if you want) and the Andouille (a little harder to grill, but it could be done) so you don’t have to have any heat in the kitchen.

As usual, Phillis Carey had a very, VERY long title to the recipe: Cajun Chopped Salad with Andouille Sausage, Shrimp, Red Beans, Three Peppers, Toasted Pecans and Creole Mustard Dressing. I shortened up the title, but there you have it in her original form. Phillis wants to make sure she lures you into the recipe by including almost all the ingredients in the name!

The dressing – to me – was what made this salad. It was a little bit tart (vinegar) and a little bit sweet (honey) and piquant (Creole mustard and Cajun seasoning). Mixed all together, it’s wonderful! She did tell us that the dressing doesn’t keep – not that it spoils – but it loses its zip after about 6 hours, so don’t make a huge batch of this, thinking you can keep it around for awhile. Phillis did explain a bit about Creole mustard – it’s a vinegar-based mustard. Regular Dijon mustard (which you can use in this, but it won’t taste the same) is a wine based mustard, so the flavors are very different. It just so happened that the cooking store where this class was held had a new bottled Creole mustard that Phillis and others were raving about. Of course I had to buy it. It’s by Dulcet Cuisine, and this one is simply Creole Mustard. The mustard is available at Whole Foods if you have one near you. It’s also exported to Canada and Britain.

Do soak the red onions for a few minutes in water and vinegar. The shrimp is marinated briefly in a bit of the dressing, and you do have to cook up the Andouille a bit. But everything else is just some chopping and mixing. Hopefully you already have some toasted pecans – if you don’t and it’s too hot in the kitchen – just use them right out of the package. You’ll get all kinds of flavors jumping in your mouth as you eat this – the sweet and tart from the dressing – the flavor of the shrimp, and the little chopped bits of Andouille too. It’s got lots of veggies in it, so you’ll get your protein and veggies all in one plate. And carbs too since there are some beans included. A complete meal.

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Two years ago: Lamb Eggplant Shepherd’s Pie
Three years ago: Curried Chicken Sandwiches
Four years ago: Roasted Apricot Almond Cake

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As usual, brown food lacks a bit of vitality in a photograph. Suffice to say these are delicious. Different, a bit. But brown. These happen to be fingerling potatoes (Trader Joe’s has this cute little bag of potatoes that are just enough for a dinner for 4). The potatoes are cut in half lengthwise, then simmered or steamed in a mixture of chicken broth, fresh garlic, a little squirt of olive oil, some thyme or rosemary and most importantly, some lemon zest. Once cooked through you can remove the potatoes and reduce-down the broth (actually my pan cooked dry and I had to add some water, so perhaps I simmered them on too-high heat). I sprinkled in some salt, but then decided it needed just a tiny bit of richness, so I added in a little pat of butter. Perfect.

The recipe came from Dorie Greenspan, in her most recent cookbook Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours. There is nothing complicated about these potatoes – Dorie suggests the recipe works best with baby potatoes – they’re just simmered in a flavorful broth. I sprinkled on some freshly ground black pepper. You could add some minced parsley to give it some prettiness. Serve immediately if you can.

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A year ago: Mimi’s Buttermilk Spice Muffins
Two years ago: Madeira Onions
Three years ago: Pork Tenderloin with Mango Sambal
Four years ago: Pesto Pea Salad (Spinach)

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When I served this to my hubby the other night, he announced that it was the best chicken breast dish I’d ever made. Well, I don’t know that I’d quite go that far, but it was really, really good. It had just plain good chicken taste, it had texture from the bread crumb and Parmesan crust, and it had this tart citrusy butter drizzle on top with some tarragon thrown in. The recipe came from my new favorite cookbook (are you getting tired of hearing about this cookbook yet?), The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century? I’ve been slowly reading my way through the cookbook – I mean, it’s over 1000 pages long, so it’s going to take awhile. I hadn’t gotten to the chicken chapter yet. But according to the index there aren’t all that many recipes for boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The original recipe appeared in the New York Times in 1987 – a Pierre Franey recipe from a column called “60 Minute Gourmet.”

First I pounded the chicken breasts to an even thickness. I’ve learned over the years, that I have to do that, so the chicken cooks evenly. That part isn’t in the recipe, but I added it in. Otherwise I stuck to the recipe exactly. Oops, well, I used some home made garlic croutons (crushed up) as the breading instead of the fresh bread suggested in the recipe. The chicken gets dipped in flour, then in a seasoned egg mixture, then in the combination of grated Parm and the bread crumbs. The pieces are sautéed in oil, only a few minutes per side (the chicken tenders required little more than a flash in the pan). Once removed you add a tablespoon or two of butter and some freshly chopped tarragon and drizzle that over the top. Done. Absolutely wonderful.

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A year ago: A photo of my citrus press – my favorite universal one
Two years ago: Grilled Lamb Chops with Herb Rub
Three  years ago: Flank Steak with Orange Marinade
Four years ago: A real favorite – Roasted Poblano Asiago Soup

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Ready for something “different” as a side dish, when I spotted beautiful globe artichokes at the market, I said YES! And sure, I could have just steamed them, or simmered them in acidulated water – those are about the most simple methods to cook them, but I wanted to do something different. Remembering a stuffed artichoke I had at someone else’s house once, I went directly to Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s cookbook, The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy’s Farmhouse Kitchen. Sure enough, she has a great recipe for them. These were just scrumptious. Absolutely delicious! I was grateful I had all the ingredients on hand, too.

The artichokes needed to be trimmed (the top third off, using a good, strong serrated knife), then using scissors I trimmed off the sharp points on all the leaves around the outside. I used a serrated tomato corer, actually, to remove all the center, including the fuzzy choke. With one of these beauties it was simple (took about 2 minutes max) but with the other one it must have taken me at least 10 minutes. Some part of the interior was a little deformed and it just clung to its choke. Finally I got it accomplished, though. I used a lemon half to rub over the cut edges (keeps them from turning brown and ugly). Then I made a filling – some salami, pancetta, fresh garlic, Italian parsley and some fresh mint – all minced up, with a little pepper and a smidgen of salt. The filling was lightly stuffed into the center and some in between the leaves (as best I could – these were young artichokes and were very firm and tight – making them hard to stuff anything much between the leaves.

Kasper’s recipe doesn’t call for bread or croutons in her filling, but I had some delicious garlic salt enhanced croutons from my Green Panzanella Chicken and Pasta Salad the other night. I crushed them up a bit and added them in on top and tried to stuff a few pieces in between leaves where I could pry them apart.

A bit more lemon was squeezed over, into a pan they went (just a bit larger than they were), some olive oil was drizzled over the top – to sink down into the crevices – and some white wine poured into the pan. They baked for a long time – nearly 1 1/2 hours – covered tightly. Every 20 minutes I basted the artichokes with the wine broth in the bottom of the pan.

Do test the base – not just the stem – but the heart – with a sharp knife point to determine if they’re cooked through. Then they’re left to sit for awhile to cool down. I cut them in half and we ate just a half of one as a side dish to a grilled steak. They were absolutely divine. Kasper’s recipe suggests this could be a complete meal if you eat the whole thing. It might have done, but I’m glad we had just a half along with something else. If you like artichokes – you’ll love this preparation. You can make these a day ahead too – just bring them to room temp before serving, with the left over wine broth drizzled over the top. Do note, there’s no cheese in this dish. You could add it if you like – it might be a really delicious addition.

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A year ago: Gateau Crepes a la Florentine (a Julia Child, complicated recipe)
Two years ago: White Gazpacho Soup
Three years ago: Asparagus (everything you’d ever want to know about it)

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You’ve seen this picture before, if you’ve been reading my blog for awhile. It’s something I make every spring when fresh Bing cherries are available. It’s a fantastic topping for vanilla ice cream. Or better yet, the way I served it the other night to dinner guests, in a kind of Eton Mess, a mixture, or layers, or parfait rather, of crumbled meringue cookies, vanilla ice cream, these cherries and a bit of whipped cream, then some of the magnificent juice drizzled on top.

What I like about these is that they’re incredibly easy to make – you do have to pit the cherries. Well, I guess I should say you don’t have to pit them, but I prefer them that way. I use my olive pitter – pictured at right – and it seems to pit cherries like magic.  Once they’re all pitted, marinate the Bing cherries in a little sugar, then add some red wine (or use cranberry juice if you don’t want to use wine). Place them in a large flat sauté pan with a curl of stick cinnamon, a clove, an allspice berry (whole) and you bring it to a simmer and cook for just a short time. Cool. Add a little good, thick balsamic vinegar. Done. They don’t cook long enough to truly “cook” the cherries – they’re almost still fresh/raw, almost but not quite, so they still retain their lovely color.

I try to make this twice during Bing cherry season, and once this compote is made, it keeps for awhile in the refrigerator, so I’ll still have some maybe into late July. You should too.

printer-friendly PDF of just the recipe, or read the original Fresh Bing Cherry Compote blog post I did in 2009. It’s a recipe from Russ Parsons.
Two years ago: Garbanzo Bean, Feta and Cilantro Salad (a real favorite)
Four years ago: Baby Back Ribs with Peanut Butter Slather

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Ugly, ancient wallpaper hidden behind a mirror

It was several months ago. . . I walked into the guest bathroom upstairs and once again, I was reminded how much I hated the very old brown and gold tile on the floor. Clearly it was popular back in the 60’s when this house was built. It was probably a kind of Mediterranean design. Positively ugly now! Several tiles were cracked.  When we bought our home 7 years ago, I was more charmed by the house and didn’t pay a lot of attention to the bathrooms, although I knew they hadn’t been remodeled. Updated with décor, but not remodeled at all. In this particular bathroom, the grout was gone, mostly where the tile butted up against the tub. The cabinet was old, with sink tops that dated the room. Brass fixtures were everywhere. The grout in the tub and shower was chipped. The shower head we knew was barely usable for guests. A few hours later I walked into our small powder room (downstairs) and was reminded that the cabinet (small) in that room was also very old. The big, oval mirror on the wall had, at some point, fallen down and chipped a big gouge in the white and brass (oh, ugly, ugly) center faucets. The cabinet had obviously been painted ten times over the years and it showed it with uneven and some chipped paint, etc. The next day I had reason to go into the other full bath on our ground floor (fondly called Dave’s bathroom, or the “men’s” room by my DH) and looked at all the brass fixtures, the shower door there that was a bit rickety, although it did work. Houseguests had told us that the shower head in that bathroom wasn’t working right, either.

The day after that I was in our master bathroom – a combination bath and dressing area – which is quite large, actually – where we have a shower (brass and glass trim) and a single, traditionally shaped jacuzzi tub. A tub neither of us uses – partly because it’s very awkward to get in and out of it. Dave would never use it because of being a double amputee – he could get in there – but he’d never be able to get out of it. I’ve used the jacuzzi tub maybe twice in the 7 years. The tub was obviously installed when the home was built back in the 1960’s. So it’s old. It still works, but it’s got huge brass fixtures in the tub. And because it’s so large it really hogs the room.

My DH and I have talked about remodeling bathrooms a few times over the years, but always he convinced me it would be just too much money and that everything was “good enough.” Well, this time, I just said I’d “had it.” We think we’ll probably stay in our home for a good long time – we have no plans to move again unless it was to go to a retirement home at some point – and I merely said to my DH that if and when we ever do sell this house, we’d just have to remodel the bathrooms if we expect to get a fair price for our home. So, why wait until then to remodel the bathrooms – we should remodel them now so we enjoy it. He agreed.

So, to cut to the chase here, we’re in the process of having our 3 1/2 bathrooms remodeled. It’s been about 4 weeks now and to say that it’s loud and noisy here every weekday is an understatement. The first few days it was the jackhammers. And lots of pounding. Day in and day out there is pounding from the 2 1/2 bathrooms they are working on currently. There’s the hot mop (tar) wagon that has been here twice so far. Oh, we just had to get out of the house those days. It was awful – the smell. Some days there are two teams of worker bees here – working on two bathrooms at a time. Compressors run part of the time too. Our master bath is untouched at this point – so that’s the bathroom we must use currently. (After they finish the other 2 1/2 bathrooms, they’ll start on the master bath, which will likely take longer to do.) We have no privacy, hardly, for 8-9 hours a day. The workers are very nice, and they clean up everything impeccably every single day, but people stream in and out of the front door, the back door, trooping up and down the stairs and into and out of the garage all day long. Tile saws are buzzing. And more hammers pounding. We have very limited parking behind our house (we live on a buttressed hill) so some days it’s difficult even getting our car(s) out of the garage because there are workers’ cars here and there.

There’s not much to show yet in this process. But here’s a photo I took this morning showing the guest bathroom downstairs (we have one guest bedroom on our ground floor), and it’s where most of our houseguests stay. We have a king bed in that room, and the bathroom is across the hall.

I was standing in the doorway to take the photo – a 4 foot cabinet and sink will go in on the left. The toilet is behind the door you can see on the right. Ahead is the new shower. A walk-in shower which will have a barely discernible lip on the right edge so it could be accessible by wheelchair if necessary. The floor you see isn’t wet – it’s just the dried hot mop. And it was just to the left where I took the photo of the wallpaper at the top of this post. Who knows how old that wallpaper is. Probably from the late 60’s or maybe early 70’s. Horrid. There was a large mirror on the wall, so we never knew, of course, about the wallpaper behind it. This bathroom was painted a bright brick red color in its most recent style. It will be more neutral now.

There’s a picture of the upstairs guest bathroom. Shower, obviously, on the left. There will be granite on the countertops and pony wall, and glass from the pony wall up. A sliding shower door on the far side. I love the horizontal green glass tiles in the middle of the shower.  Toilet front left. Sinks on the right. New tile floor (hooray – the brown and gold stuff is gone). We also will have a pocket door into the bedroom (front right) that will allow privacy for guests staying in that room. That was my idea.

We have been very fortunate over the last 15 years to have a decorator – now she’s a very good friend – help us. Darci completely remodeled our previous home and worked with us when we moved into this house 7 years ago. She took about 2 days to create a vision for all of these bathrooms, and with very little discussion, we’d agreed on colors, tile, granite concepts, cabinet styles, sinks, toilets, etc. We’ve learned to trust her judgment! We did have to visit a granite yard to pick out two slabs that will be used for the various rooms. With our kitchen remodel I did most of the design myself, but with bathrooms I’m glad to let her do the hard part. Actually we’re not changing the layout of the rooms. Just updating everything within each one. The jacuzzi tub is going, but we’re replacing it with a free standing tub that will be tucked into a corner. Every home does need a tub somewhere (I’ve learned that from watching all the HGTV shows over the years).

There’s a pix of the copper vessel sink that will be installed in the powder room. This is the only vessel sink we’ll have – all other rooms will be more functional, traditional. But I wanted a vessel sink (relatively inexpensive, as vessel sinks go) in this small powder room to make it a bit more stylish. The countertop here will be marble, with a neutral granite backsplash. This room is wallpapered with a rustic brick design showing tufts of little plants growing between the bricks.

This project probably won’t be completed for another 2 months. That’s a guess. Maybe they’ll surprise us and be able to do it faster than that. Tile was backordered, so there have been delays already. And doing the templates for granite takes at least 2 weeks. The cabinets require the most time. We’re also having a closet guy build in our master closets too. The two closets have built-ins now, but they’re old and were probably a DIY (read: cheap) to begin with. Add another $2800 to the job! Whew, remodeling bathrooms is one very expensive proposition! Little did I know that bathrooms are the most expensive interior real estate to remodel. Most of this house originally had popcorn ceilings, and Dave’s walk-in closet still has it. That’s going, obviously.

Fortunately, our kitchen, living room, dining room and family room are all untouched by this project, so we stay there most of the time during the daytime hours. My upstairs office is fine too, although the noise is often very loud. But, plenty of cooking has gone on during this process. Stay tuned. Pound . . . pound . . . pound.

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The other day I was reading a pasta recipe at someone else’s blog, and it got me to craving a salad, so I decided to create my own salad, but using a riff on panzanella. You know, panzanella is Italian for bread salad. I didn’t exactly want a true panzanella that’s mostly bread with veggies in it. I do have a fantastic Grilled Panzanella Salad on my blog in case you’re really wanting that. This time, though, I wanted something totally different. But sort of similar. So here’s my salad. It contains cooked chicken, some pennette pasta (or you can use whatever pasta shape you’d prefer), tomatoes, fresh baby spinach, lemon juice, some home made pesto (we have lots of basil in our garden at the moment) mixed into some cream as the dressing. And, the delicious toasted bread croutons. It took no time at all to make – except for baking the croutons and cooking the pasta. While those two things cooked, I chopped up the chicken, cut the tomatoes, squeezed lemon juice and made the dressing. I’d made the pesto earlier in the day, but you can use bottled pesto. I merely made my own since I had the pine nuts and basil on hand.

Here’s what I did. First I put the water on to boil, since that takes 10-15 minutes. I only used about 2 ounces of pasta, but if you’d like more pasta, by all means, use more as that will stretch the salad to serve more people (just use more dressing). I cut up the ciabatta loaf I had from the day before that was already starting to get stale. I tossed those cubes with some oil (I used grapeseed, but EVOO is just fine too) then sprinkled the cubes with a jarred seasoned garlic salt. Because the bread was damp from the oil, the salt stuck well to the bread. The croutons were baked in a 425° oven for about 5-7 minutes, just until they were golden brown. You want to do those in a hot oven because you want the exterior to brown, but the inside to still have some softness to it. If you baked the bread cubes at 350°, it would take 15 minutes, perhaps, to get them brown, AND they’d be as hard as bricks. That’s not what you want in a panzanella.

There’s the pesto at left, and the golden hued croutons just out of the oven. The leftover chicken I had on hand needed to be cubed up, which I did, the tomatoes halved. Once the pasta was cooked through and drained, I put that in the big salad bowl and squeezed fresh lemon juice over it. Then I began adding all the other ingredients – the spinach, tomatoes, chicken and the asparagus. The croutons were added in on top and I poured the dressing (not all, but most of it) onto the bread and tossed it well, then mixed the entire salad. I wanted the pesto cream to coat the bread first, then the excess would also coat the salad and pasta as well. Add more dressing if it needs it, but I caution you to not use too much. I had fresh baby spinach on hand, but you could use any other kind of sturdy lettuce.

If you’d like you could also shred some good Parmesan on top of the salad. I didn’t think it needed it because the pesto had some. The salad is very malleable – use what ingredients you have on hand. Green beans? Add them. Peas? Good addition too. No asparagus? No worries. No spinach? Add Romaine or even green leaf. Or arugula would be great with this.

The next day I got out what was left over of this salad. It was still delicious. The spinach hadn’t wilted, the bread cubes were only slightly soggy, but full of that good pesto flavor. The pasta had absorbed some of the pesto cream, which was good. It might have benefitted from a little squirt of lemon juice over all of it, but it tasted just fine so I didn’t bother. This salad is full of flavor; it would even be good enough for a warm summer night dinner with guests. Worth making; easy too.

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A year ago: Thai Tea
Two years ago: Couscous Chicken Salad
Three years ago: Sarah’s Ginger Scones
Four years ago: Hot as Haiti (a drink)

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My plan had been that the next recipe I’d try was the Green Goddess dressing in my newest cookbook, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century. But we were invited to some friends for dinner and there would be a crowd, so I offered to make two desserts. With that in mind, there was no question that the 2nd most requested recipe from the New York Times’ recipe archives would be the one I’d try first.

This is an easy recipe. In fact, in Amanda Hesser’s headnote to the recipe she says: “For reasons that elude me, cakes are reputed to require long hours in the kitchen, when anyone who actually makes cakes knows that cookies are the true time suck . . . “ She goes on to say “if you look back in the Times’ archives at recipes from 30+ years ago, when most people cooked every day, there were many more cake recipes. Cake was a staple you whipped up every couple of days, after the previous one had vanished into crumbs.”

What’s great about this cake is that there’s nothing odd in it – you might even have all the ingredients in your pantry right this minute. To me, that’s a bonus if I don’t have to go to the grocery store, or send my DH for me. You just need apples, vegetable oil, walnuts, raisins and eggs. The other items are baking staples. The cake has no frosting or topping at all. That certainly makes it an easy cake.

The cake batter uses vegetable oil instead of butter, which, according to the headnote, makes for a very light crumb. It’s really simple to put together, just as Hesser suggests. The apples can turn brown, so I didn’t do those until the batter was complete – then I just folded them in with the raisins and walnuts. I used my handy-dandy apple corer-cutter. It’s my newest, fun gadget in my kitchen. And when I need apples, this make such quick work of it. You do have to peel the apples first, but it really didn’t take me long then to wham this thing down to get wedges, then I cut each slice in half and into the batter they went.

The cake bakes for 75 minutes in a greased and floured tube pan, then cools before you remove it. I will tell you that my heart skipped a beat when I tried to remove it from the pan. I used a plastic knife kind of thing to clear the edges, pulled it out of the outer form, but then I had to turn it upside down (off that center tube part) and turn it out. My hand isn’t all that big and it was a precarious moment or two before it came loose and plopped, still barely warm into my hand, then I carefully balanced it on its side until I could put it onto the footed cake plate. Whew. If you have a second set of hands, I’d recommend it. I hadn’t let it cool completely to room temp, either, so that might have made a difference since it was almost bendable. It could easily have broken in half – do the deed in a hurry so that doesn’t happen!

The texture of the top of the cake is so interesting – it’s craggy – that’s the best word, and one used by somebody else who made this. You can barely see some of the cracking shards on the top of the cake in the picture –  they cracked even more when I balanced the cake in my hands. A couple of pieces broke off (oh darn, I had to taste them right then and there, of course).

In my book, this would serve a whole lot more than 8 people, but that’s what the recipe says. And the original suggests serving it with vanilla ice cream. By all means do, but Amanda Hesser thought lightly whipped and sweetened heavy cream was better. That was my first choice anyway – for both of the desserts. Amanda suggested mixing some crème fraiche with the whipped cream, which I did. For a cup of whipping cream, after it was whipped I added about 1/3 cup of crème fraiche.

I do want to share with you about my newest gadget for the kitchen. It’s an apple corer. But it’s a different apple corer than some – note the differences between the two photos – in the top one the cuts make 8 wedges. In the bottom one I’ve twisted the unit and it now has 16 cutter blades. That’s what I used for the cake.

The unit is made by Amco, costs about $17, and it’s available through Amazon, if you’re interested – the Amco Dial-A-Slice Adjustable Apple Corer and Slicer (See all Graters, Peelers & Slicers).

You can see how it works – it cuts out the core itself – in the picture at right. I have two other such slicers, but not as good as this one. None of them peel the apples – that’s about the only down side to it. I’ve used it several times, and been pleased each time. It has small clips on the red outer edge – once pulled out slightly the corer rotates to adjust to either setting. It also has a clear base that fits on the cutter blade side so you won’t cut yourself if you leave it in your kitchen drawer.

So, the bottom line? We loved the cake. It was really extra tasty. I cut it into about 20 slices instead of 8. I’ll make it again. In fact I have just one tiny slice that didn’t get eaten and I’ll be enjoying that in the next day or two. Some people eat it for breakfast. That also sounds good! The cake is different – the texture (with the raisins and big chunks of apple) – the top, crackly edges – even the cake part itself. All delicious. Worth making. I see why it’s such a highly requested recipe.

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A year ago: Italian Spaghetti and Meat Sauce, with Meatballs (my old-time favorite I’ve made for about 40 years)
Two years ago: Grilled Caesar Salad

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