Apple Maple Turnover

Source:  All You Magazine

2T butter
2 apples, peeled, cored and diced (I didn't peel mine-- apple peel never bothers me)
3 T sugar
2 T maple syrup
1 sheet frozen puff pastry thawed
1 T milk

Melt butter in a skillet.  Add apples and cook, stirring  occasionally until browned and beginning to soften, about 5 minutes.  Stir in 2 T sugar and maple syrup.  Cook, stirring, until apples are soft but not falling apart and liquid is syrupy.  Transfer to bowl and cool completely. (Yeah, a totally forgot this step.)
Preheat oven to 400.  Line a baking sheet with parchment.  Unroll pastry and cut into 4 squares.
Place one piece of pastry info front of you so that a point faces you.  Spoon apple mixture over half, leaving a half inch border.  Fold over to enclose filling, forming a triangle.  Press edges with a fork to seal. Place on baking sheet.  Brush with milk and remaining sugar.  Bake until puffed and golden 15-20 minutes.  Wait for 5 minutes.  Serve warm.

If by now you are starting to wonder, what's with all the dessert recipes ...well, get used to it.  I am a huge dessert fan.  I love making (and eating) desserts.  I picked this recipe because I always have apples on hand --it's my daughter's favorite fruit, so we buy them all the time.  I was eager to try them in a different way.  The recipe also seemed easy, yielding  beautiful pastries.


I doubled the recipe. What was I going to do with the other sheet of puff pastry?  So the recipe came together easily.  I had a lot of apple mixture left over after a filled my pastry triangles.  I don't know if I underfilled my pastry -- I had trouble as it was to make sure they are properly sealed.  So I would suggest using 3 apples instead of 4 if you are going to double the recipe.  Otherwise, easy peasy.


My 3 year old got the first pastry.  I was somewhat concerned b/c she pretty much ate around the filling -- ate all the pastry, and then informed me that she was done.

I thought it was OK.  Lot of pastry to the apple ratio -- so maybe I did underfill my pastries.  Maybe I should have rolled it out the bit, so the pastry is thinner but bigger.  Otherwise, not overly sweet, which I think is a good thing.  I was disappointed in the lack of maple flavor.  Overall, the filling wasn't particularly tasty -- maybe my daughter was right, after all.  Next time, I would definitely add more maple syrup, and possible a little lemon juice in the filling to jazz it up a bit.

Lemon Buttermilk Bundt Cake

Source:  Bon Appetit Magazine

1 c unsalted butter, room temperature
3 c flour
1 T baking powder
2 t salt
2.5 c sugar
finely grated zest of 8 lemons
4 large eggs
1 c buttermilk
3/4 c apricot or peach preserves
1/4 c fresh lemon juice

oven at 350
butter and flour Bundt pan  (use a 12 cup pan - -larger than the standard bundt pan). Whisk baking powder, salt and 3 cups of flour together.  Combine sugar and lemon zest in a large bowl.  Using your fingertips, rub together until lemon sugar is well blended.  Add 1 cup of butter to lemon sugar.  Using electric mixer on high speed, beat until mixture is light and fluffy, about 4 minutes.  Add eggs one at a time, beating between additions and occasionally scraping down sides and bottom of bowl with a rubber spatula, until mixture is light and very fluffy, about 4 minutes longer.  Reduce speed to low.  Add dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk in 2 additions, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.  Scrape batter into prepared pan, smooth top.  Bake cake until golden brown and beginning to pull away from sides of pan, 60-70 minutes.  Transfer  to a wire rack and let cake cool in pan for 10 minutes.  Invert cake onto rack, remove pan, and let cool completely.

Combine preserves (I used half apricot and half peach -- mostly b/c that's what I had at home), and lemon juice in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil, redue heat, and simmer, stirring occasionally until glaze is reduce to half a cup (6-8 minutes).  Strain glaze into small pitcher, discard solids in strainer.  I must have used too fine of a sieve, b/c my glaze was not straining at all -- after a while I got tired of waiting, and just dumped the glaze, solids and all on top of the cake -- probably sacrificed some silkiness of the glaze....but I was/am willing to live with that.  Pour glaze over cooled cake and let sit for at least 10 minutes.

I picked this recipe b/c Bon Appetit's dessert recipes are generally top notch.  I also love lemon desserts, and the texture that buttermilk lends to pastries.  On a more private note -- last time I made a bundt cake, it got stuck in the pan, and turned into a hot mess, so I was eager to prove to myself that I can, in fact properly prepare a bundt pan, and unmold a bundt cake.

The hardest part of the recipe was zesting 8 lemons.  And then, you only use one of the lemons for the glaze, so you are left with 7 lemons that have no skin left (probably a good time to make a nice pitcher of lemonade).  The recipe was interesting in that there seemed to be a lot of sugar -- in the end, I think it was necessary to balance the tartness of the lemons, and also made a outside of the cake nice and crusty.  Cake baked perfectly and unmolded  easily.

It's delicious.  Very lemony, with the slight, almost oily finish from the essential oils in the zest (trust me, it's a good thing -- like you are eating real lemon, and not an extract).  The cake has a beautiful, tender texture thanks to the buttermilk.  The glaze is also very tart, which makes this a delicious and refreshing yet comforting dessert.  Highly recommend.

Cod with Chorizo and Tomatoes

Source:  Oprah Magazine.

2.5 T olive oil
3.5 oz dried Spanish Chorizo, sliced into 1/4' pieces (I ended up using a smoked fresh Chorizo, b/c I couldn't find cured Spanish style Chorizo)
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved (I forgot to halve mine :()
salt
pepper
4 6oz cod fillets


Heat olive oil in skillet.  Add chorizo and 2 T water.  Cover  and cook over medium low heat until chorizo is tender about 3 minutes.  Uncover, add tomatoes, and cook over medium high heat, tossing, until tomatoes just start to soften (maybe one minute more).  B/c I forgot to halve my tomatoes, I cooked them just a touch longer, until they started to burst.  Season with salt and pepper.   Cover and set aside.
In a different skillet, heat more olive oil over high heat, until oil is shimmery.  Season cod with salt and pepper.  Add cod to skillet, and cook until brown on the bottom, about 4 minutes.  Flip cod, and cook over medium heat for another 2 minutes.  Serve cod topped with chorizo/tomato mixture.

I picked this recipe because it seemed simple, had few ingredients, and because I don't eat nearly enough seafood.  Cod doesn't have a the Omega 3 fatty acids that salmon and other fatty fish does, but it's a lean protein that's probably a lot better than beef.

The first problem I ran into was getting the chorizo.  Schnucks didn't carry it, Whole Foods didn't carry it -- and frankly, I was too lazy to go beyond that.  I debated on whether to go for a fresh chorizo, which may have a different texture but has the same flavor profile as the Spanish style chorizo, or to pick a cured sausage with a slightly different flavor profile.  I opted for the smoked fresh chorizo, and I don't believe the texture was bad, or that the dish suffered.  I also used frozen cod -- (defrosted it before use!!) - all fresh seafood in the Midwest has been previously frozen and then thawed out, so why shell out the extra cash.  Now, if I lived by the ocean, I would most certainly have gotten fresh fish.

The recipe was quick, and was very easy to prepare.  The hardest thing to do was to leave the fish alone when cooking no matter what kind of noises were coming from the pan.  Sure enough, after the 4 minutes, the fish came up easily, nothing stuck to the pan, and flipped over in one piece.  I was proud of myself :)

This was a wonderful dish.  I served with with white rice.  Cod is just not a very exciting fish.  It has a nice firm flesh, but not much of a taste.  The chorizo is very spicy, and by cooking it first, it renders a fair amount of fat.  So the fatty, aggressively flavored chorizo spices up the boring cod, and then the cooked tomatoes are deliciously sweet, helping cool off the heat, and their acidity cuts the fattiness of the chorizo.  It is a clever and delicious combination of flavors that definitely works well together, and is a different seafood dish to try.

Velvet Crumb Cake

Source:  Bisquick Box

Yes, folks for my first trial, I made a velvet crumb cake with broiled frosting  -- from the recipe on the Bisquick box.  I was intrigued by the unusual method of baking a cake, and putting a topping on it,  and broiling it.  I thought that was unusual.

This is the cake after you take it out of the oven.  You are supposed to let it cool for a little bit before you put a topping on.

The finished product.

Close-up for the topping.

It was very easy to put together in the mixer.  Cake baked perfectly in 35 minutes.  The recipe call for broiling for 3 minutes - -part of the coconut topping got a little dark -- I would probably take it out after 2.5 minutes.

It was a little messy to plate -- maybe that will improve once the cake sets a bit.  The topping is like a crunchy crust, and the cake below is very delicate and it crumbles a bit.  I guess that's why they call it a "crumble cake".

The cake is delicious -- the toasted nuts/coconut in the topping is delicious -- it's sweet, it's crunchy, it's buttery ... it's good.  The cake is very delicate, and has a delightful yeasty quality to it (the Bisquick?).  The overall verdict -- this is a delicious, and easy cake to bake.  Would be perfect for a brunch or afternoon coffee.  Goes in the "I will definitely make again" category.

Velvet Crumb Cake

for the cake:
1.5 c  Bisquick mix
1/2 c sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk or water
2 T shortening
1 tsp vanilla

for the topping:
1/2 c flaked coconut
1/3 c packed brown sugar
1/4 c chopped nuts
3 T margarine softened
2 T milk


Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour 8" square or 9" round pan.  I used an 8' square glass pan.
Beat all ingredients (except topping) in large bowl on low for 30 seconds, scraping bowl.  I used milk instead of water, and instead of sugar and vanilla extract, I used half a cup of sugar from the jar where I keep my very special Zanzibar vanilla beans - it flavors the sugar and it's delightful.  Beat on medium speed for 4 minutes.  Pour into pan.

Bake 30-35 minutes, until tester comes out clean. Cool slightly.

Prepare topping -- mix all ingredients.  I used walnuts.

Spread topping on cake.  Broil for 3 minutes.  Be careful after 2 minutes.  Mine could have used 15 seconds less under the broiler.