Weather has been nice and cool, so I decided that not only did I need to use up the last of the summer zucchini, I wanted bread as well.
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Got some apples from the farmer’s market, but just didn’t feel up to making a pie. Or more accurately, didn’t feel up to making a pie crust. I have got to start freezing pie dough for situations such as these.

So I browsed some recipes and found an apple crumble recipe that looked pretty good.

Apple Crumble
Filling:
3 pounds apples*
1/4 cup apple cider
2 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp rum
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg **
1/4 ginger
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp flour

Topping:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats ***
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 stick cold butter

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a large casserole dish or a square cake pan.

Peel, core, and slice apples. **** While peeling and coring the apples, I place the slices in a large bowl of cold water with lemon juice.

In a large bowl, thoroughly mix together the apples and the other filling ingredients. Mix until the apples are well coated, then pour into the baking pan.

Stir together the dry ingredients for the topping. Cut in the butter (you don’t want to use a food processor here, since it would affect the oats).

Sprinkle the topping over the filling.

Bake for 1 1/2 hours at 350 F. Let stand until it has cooled slightly.

If only we hadn’t run out of vanilla ice cream.

* Look for pie apples, such as Granny Smith, McIntosh, Courtland, Northern Spy, etc
** Fresh. Seriously, invest in a spice grater and always use fresh nutmeg.
*** Rolled oats, though you can use instant oats in a pinch, it’s worth having rolled oats on hand for baking
**** Get an apple peeler and corer.

Since my last foray went so badly, this time I went to my recipe file to find a zucchini bread recipe I’d used before.

Of course things couldn’t go smoothly: I discovered that aside from the 1/2 cup in the flour bin, I was out of white flour. I have whole wheat flour, I have bread flour, I have pastry flour, and I have white wheat flour. But no back-up white flour. So I used white wheat and hoped for the best.
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Since I was little, when we grilled out my Mom would often make something called “drunk peaches” for dessert.

Combined with a couple recipes I found, I’ve refined the recipe. It’s perfect for late summer grilling.

Drunk Peaches
3 or 4 fresh peaches
1/3 cup brown sugar
fresh grated nutmeg
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp dark rum or bourbon (depending upon your mood)
Vanilla ice cream

Fill a pot with enough water to cover the peaches. Bring the water to a boil.

While the watering is heating, wash the peaches, and then make an “X” in the skin on the bottom of the peach.

Butter a grill safe pan large enough to hold the peaches. You can use a disposable pan if you like. I use an old bread pan.

Place the peaches in the boiling water for one minute.

After one minute remove the peach from the boiling water and drop it into ice water.

Starting at the “X” you made, peel the peaches. The skin should come right off, although you can use a knife if you prefer.

Cut completely around the peach, then twist slightly along the axis–the peach should come apart in two pieces. Remove the pit.

Place the peaches into the greased pan.

Place butter slices atop the peaches. Sprinkle with brown sugar. Grate nutmeg over the brown sugar. Pour bourbon/rum over the peaches.

Cover entire pan with foil. When you remove dinner from the grill, place the pan of peaches on the grill over indirect heat.

Once dinner is over, the peaches should be finished. The peaches should be soft, and sitting in a fair amount of liquid.

Spoon the peaches into bowls.

Add a scoop or two of ice cream.

Pour the remaining liquid over the peaches and ice cream.

Eat!

Today’s recipe comes from the National Museum and Natural History.

OK. Here’s some real food.

No recipe though. Pretty sure you can figure this one out all on your own.

It was way too hot to bake this weekend. So again, I got nothing.

Instead, I’m asking for ideas (and recipes) for what I should try to make (assuming the temperature drops). Not that I don’t have lots of cookbooks, but I like seeing what everyone else likes.

My website is still acting wonky, so here’s are some pictures of making dinner in Denver. Meanwhile, lets hope the server issues clear up soon.

We made pizza, and much discussion was had about the proper placement of toppings.

And we made oreos. Anne decided to show me up on the OCD front by aligning the cookies by size.

Show off!

The Farmer’s Market had zucchini this week, so I decided to make zucchini bread. I tried the recipe in the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book.

What was interesting was that the loaf with nuts turned out much paler than the loaf without nuts. Considering that the recipe called for nuts (and raisins which I left out) I found this surprising.

The bread, however, is not at all sweet. And is drier than I’d expect. So I think I’ll see if I can find my old zucchini bread recipe and leave this whole wheat recipe behind.

The zucchini were so cute!

Less cute now.

One of the eggs had a double yolk.

Here’s the loaf with nuts, looking rather pale.

Here you see the two loaves side by side.

I won’t bother give you the recipe, because I don’t at all recommend it.

Tasty Tuesday: The All-American Dessert Book by Nancy Baggett

As I’ve repeatedly whined, I’ve been too busy to do much of anything recently, and unfortunately, that includes cooking and baking–I haven’t made anything since my birthday. Boo!

So lacking anything of my own for you today, I want to tell you about one of my favorite cook books.

I picked up The All American Dessert Book on a whim, but immediately fell in love. First it was with the pictures. The book is full of color pictures of the desserts in the book, but what I love best about the pictures is these are desserts that look like they were made by a real human being. Often cookbooks present photos of perfect food that you know you are never going to be able to recreate in your own kitchen, and so instead of even trying, you decided to fall back on an old standard. But these pictures show pans and dishes that have been used, and food that looks like you could easily recreate it in your own kitchen, instead of some ideal food made by an artist.

These are the kinds of pictures I want to see in my cookbooks. That’s not to say that my desserts look as good as the ones in the book, only that the photos in the book don’t look unachievable.

But enough about the photos, what I really want to talk about are the recipes.

Oh. Yum.

I have tried many of the recipes in this book, and loved almost all the recipes I’ve tried. And here are some of my favorite recipes from the book: Deep Dish Apple Pie, Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes, Chocolate Pudding, Chocolate Chunk Coconut Pecan Chews, Pumpkin Whoopie Pies, Sugar Cookies with Strawberry Icing.

You’ll notice that several of those recipes are familiar and I’ve featured them here. And there are many more recipes I want to try.

So if you’re looking for a cookbook that has a little of everything, with clear and easy to follow recipes, I highly recommend The All-American Dessert Book.

Here are the cakes I made for my birthday.

These pictures don’t do justice to how delicious these cakes are.

Do. Not. Drop.

The toaster oven was perfect for these, since it didn’t heat up the entire house.
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That’s right, I make my own birthday cakes: Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes.

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I’ve got nothing special for you today, though I’m planning a post on what I’m making myself for my birthday.

So instead, here are some of my favorite ingredients:

Strawberries
Dark chocolate
Walnuts
Pecans
Lemon
Vanilla

With these ingredients, I love to make:

Bittersweet brownies
Molten lava chocolate cake
Lemon shortbread cookies
Sugar cookies with strawberry icing
Lemon no-bake cheese cake

You?

Yeah, how many times am I going to feature oreos?

Lots apparently.

This time oreos were for my first official UCF visitor, neurondoc and her family. Needed something good, but relatively easy, and this hits the spot perfectly.

Homemade Oreos (via Smitten Kitchen)
For cookies:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (150 g)
1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa (47 g)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar (200 g)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 egg

For filling:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 F. Cover 4 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk together dry ingredients until well-incorporated.

Slice butter into pieces, and mix until mixture is dark and crumbly.

Add egg and mix until dough pulls together.

Scoop out tablespoon sized balls, roll, and then smoosh the balls flat. A cookie scoop is precisely what you want here to get the cookies a relatively uniform size.

Bake cookies two sheets at a time, for 9 minutes (4 1/2 minutes then rotate the sheets.)

Allow cookies to cool on the trays for a minute or two, or they’ll become deformed when you remove them.

Cool the cookies, and then match for relative size and shape.

Beat together the butter, shortening, sugar and vanilla. (I think Mexican vanilla is perfect for this.)

Put filling into a zipper freezer bag, and seal. Cut one corner off the bag, and then squirt frosting onto one cookie in each pair.

Close cookies.

Eat.

Today is pizza–primarily the process of making the dough. I really like this recipe, and even though it takes quite awhile, it makes dough for three pizzas, so I can freeze two for a much faster result on other days.

But everyone here thinks it’s worth the extra effort.

Pizza

Dough:
1 3/4 cups warm water
2 tsp yeast
1/4 cup potato flour
2 tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp honey
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 to 4 cups bread flour
corn meal

Pizza:
Pizza sauce
Shredded Parmesan cheese
Sliced provolone cheese
Shredded Mozzarella cheese
olives
mushrooms organic turkey sausage
red peppers
onion

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