ABC - Classic Dutch Apple Pie

I baked this October ABC recipe a couple months ago. The Classic Dutch Apple Pie recipe from the Weekend Bakery was amazing! Just the way I remember this childhood favorite dessert :)

There's a big difference between your traditional American apple pie and a Dutch one. Instead of a flaky crust, the crust is more like a sweet cookie crust. The filling has a minimal amount of sugar, allowing the apples to really shine.

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Spiced Apple Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

This month's ABC recipe is perfect for the fall season. Warm spices like cinnamon and cloves are very appropriate for this time of year. This recipe for Spiced Apple Cream Cheese Coffee Cake, represents a cake, a cheesecake and caramelized apples, all in one. I really loved it and so did my coworkers. I did make a few changes (such as changing the name) which I've posted at the bottom of this post.

Apple Cheesecake Bars with Caramel Drizzle

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

TBB - Cran-Apple Upside Down Cake

Although I'm super late with this post, I couldn't get myself to not blog about it. It will be a brief post though.

Hubby doesn't like sour things. So I knew he wouldn't like the fresh cranberries in this recipe, so I split up the cake in two: one half with cranberries for yours truly, and one half with thinly sliced Gala apples.

Cranberry-Apple Upside Down Cake. Why choose when you can have both? :o)

ABC - Cinnamon-Apple Twist Bread

Whether we like it or not, summer is over and fall is here. I love baking in the fall. Apples and pumpkin everywhere. The smell of warm spices wafting through the air in the kitchen. While perusing through King Arthur Flour's recipes, I came to a screeching halt when I saw this recipe and knew it would have to be a Fall recipe choice for us ABC bakers.

So this month's ABC recipe for Cinnamon-Apple Twist Bread is like one big braided cinnamon roll with the addition of apples. It looks so beautiful when it comes out of the oven, trumped only by the wonderful taste. For me, and others who tasted it, it was love at first bite :o)

Cinnamon-Apple Twist Bread slices (loaf #2). Yum!

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Crusty Apple Pie

Do you also associate Fall with apples? I love apples and I love baking with apples even more. Hence, this month's ABC recipe: Crusty Apple Pie from King Arthur Flour. What's not to like about cinnamon sugary apples hugged by a beautifully golden and flaky crust made with butter and cream cheese?

Slice of Crusty Apple Pie

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

ABC - Focaccia (Tart) for Breakfast

Focaccia Tart with Apples and Craisins and Olive Oil Streusel

This month's Avid Baker's Challenge recipe is a yeast challenge: Focaccia for Breakfast. It's Flo Braker's "sweet" take on the classic Italian bread, Focaccia. Her recipe has us dot the dough with fresh berries and an olive oil streusel. Interesting combo, huh? That's what I thought too!!

The dough for the Focaccia has a hydration percentage of about 66%, so it's a fairly "wet" and sticky dough. Avoid adding any flour to it for a light and airy end result. I made the dough in the bread machine last night and let it go through its first rise. Then I refrigerated the dough overnight in a well-oiled container.

It dawned on me that this dough will make a big batch of "dessert" Focaccia. So I started thinking "savory". The dough itself is not sweet so it could go either way. Why not both? How about I make lunch AND dessert with this dough? That's when the idea of making a Taco Pizza was born.

Apple Crisp

That's what was left after eating and giving away a bunch of apples :o)

When life gives you apples, you bake apple crisp and do so often. We were blessed with an abundance of apples from our two trees this year: HoneyCrisp and McIntosh apples. So far I've baked apple crisp three times these past two weeks. I took some to work. At home, we served it with ice cream. Everybody loved it and I even got some recipe requests. I figured I might as well do a blog post about it. Normally I don't measure very closely when I make apple crisp because it doesn't need to be exact, but the last time I baked it, I paid close(r) attention for the purpose of sharing the recipe. I hope you bake it too. It's very easy to make and doesn't require a lot of time. Since we're on the topic of apples, what's your favorite apple dessert?

Apple Crisp - simple, homey, but oh so satisfying!

HCB - Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake

Wow, it's been a while since I baked along with the Heavenly Cake Bakers, but I'm glad to be back. This week the HCB-ers had Individual Pineapple Upside Down Cake on the menu. I vividly remember these little cakes. Especially the wonderful crumb of the cake. So for this week, I decided to bake something else. With my apples ready for picking (we have a Honeycrisp and a McIntosh tree), the choice was easy: Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake. The picture in the book has captured my attention since the very first time I browsed through the book at a Barnes and Nobles. I have no idea why it took me so long to bake it :o)

Look at those big chunks of buttery crumb topping. Yum!

Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• This cake was a big hit. We ate it at room temperature and slightly warm, and preferred the latter. All it needs is a 10 second zap in the microwave. Hubby gave it a 9 out of 10.
• I loved the different flavors and textures that this cake offers. The cake is buttery, tender and moist. The filling has a great apple and cinnamon flavor and the topping is nutty and crunchy which was a wonderful contrast. Using melted butter definitely makes the crumb topping crispy. I increased the amount of flour in the topping by 25% to ensure a great crunch that lasts for a few days.
• The cake part could have been a little "fluffier" but that might be my own fault. I used Argo's Double Acting Alu Free baking powder because that's all I had. Has anyone had any issues with this baking powder? I might go back to Rumford.

HCB - Apple Upside-Down Cake

This week was Free Choice week for the Heavenly Cake Bakers. That means, we either get to pick a recipe that Marie has already baked before the baking group started, or a recipe we skipped or didn't get to. Now that apples are widely available, I knew I wanted to bake something with them, so I chose the Apple Upside-Down Cake. This was an easy, but not a quick, cake to make. I served it Tuesday night at our Eid Celebration dinner and our friends loved it. Hubby did too.

Apple Upside-Down Cake with Cinnamon-Honey Caramel Glaze

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby liked this cake a lot. He gave it a 9 out of 10.
• I used McIntosh apples. The caramel flavor in the apples came through beautifully without making the dessert too sweet. The cake was soft, moist, and melt-in-your-mouth tender (which is always the case with Rose's sour cream-based cakes). The warm spices I added to the cake complimented the apples and the caramel nicely.
• Changes: I substituted 1 Tbsp of butter with canola oil, added spices to the cake batter because I like apples + spices, and used salted butter for the caramel as well as the cake batter (omitting salt from the recipe).
• Spices = cinnamon, ginger, grated nutmeg, and a dash of cloves.
• I served the cake with a drizzle of (leftover) cinnamon-honey caramel glaze.

SMS - Caramel Apple-Cranberry Tart

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe was chosen by Susan of Baking with Susan. She picked the Double-Crusted Apple Pie, however, I decided to bake a tart instead. No messing around with 2 layers of pie dough and consequently less calories. To add more flavor to the apple filling, I added orange zest, dried cranberries, and cinnamon.

SMS #3 - Caramel Apple Turnovers with Sweet Ricotta Filling

This week's recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays was chosen by Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures. Her pick for the week was Caramel Apple Turnovers with Sweet Ricotta Filling. These taste great. I loved them. And to think I almost skipped this week's challenge. They were very easy to make and tasted great, even the next day (I like to heat them up in a small toaster oven). Check out the recipe here.


Ever since reading Vera's post on Homemade Ricotta Cheese, I've been wanting to give it a try. This week's SMS recipe could not have given me a better excuse to make it. I cut Vera's recipe in four which yielded 1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp of ricotta. Although I used 2% milk, it turned out smooth, creamy and delicious. Would definitely make it again.


Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby is not a big fan of cheese but he still liked these apple pasties as the cheese flavor was not overwhelming. I gave one to a friend and she loved them too.
• Instead of egg wash I used the leftover egg white from the recipe and added 1/8 tsp of espresso powder to it. And I used water (as I’ve done many times before with turnovers) as glue. And instead of cinnamon sugar, I used a light sprinkling of raw sugar as I found the apple filling sweet enough as-is.
• I put the ricotta filling in a Ziploc bag and easily squeezed it onto each puff pastry square.
  
• The orange zest was a bit overpowering so next time I would use a bit less.
• Braeburn apples is all I had so I used them instead of Granny Smith apples. I would think that pears would work very well too.
• I baked my turnovers at 425F degrees for 20-25 minutes and skipped the 30-minutes refrigeration step. This allowed me to taste test them a bit sooner :o)
  

Apple Almond Cake

When I read about the recipe for the Apple Almond Cake on Dragon's Kitchen, I couldn’t wait to try it. Never before have I had a dessert that combined apples and almonds so this was my chance to make it (and eat it). I have to thank Deeba of Passionate About Baking for posting her version of this cake on her site which I visit frequently otherwise I wouldn’t have found it.

I’ve tweaked Dragon’s recipe a little bit. Instead of yogurt, I used sour cream and I added a little bit of heavy cream. I also prefer to use almond oil instead of almond extract. Because almond oil is much stronger than almond extract, I usually substitute 25% of the extract with oil. With only one medium apple and one small apple sitting on my kitchen counter, I had to cut the recipe in half and bake it in a 6” springform pan. This worked out very well. The cake came out very moist. I would classify its texture as somewhere between a soft fluffy cake and a dense pound cake. The almond-cinnamon-sugar topping was truly the icing on this cake.

Apple Almond Cake

Recipe adapted from Dragon’s Kitchen

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp salted butter, room temperature (don’t add salt to recipe)

3/8 cup sugar

1 egg

1/8 tsp almond oil

¾ cup all-purpose flour

¾ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

¼ cup sour cream

1/8 cup heavy cream

1 medium apple + 1 small apple, peeled, sliced thinly

1/8 cup sliced (unblanched) almonds

1½ Tbsp sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 6” springform pan.
• Cream butter and sugar until pale colored and fluffy.
• Add the egg and the almond oil. Mix until fully incorporated.
• Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl.
• Add the flour mixture in two steps. Add sour cream and heavy cream after adding the first half of the flour mixture.
• Pour batter into prepared pan and arrange the apple slices on top.
• For the topping: combine almonds, sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle the topping over apples.
• Bake for 50-55 minutes or until cake tester inserted in middle of cake comes out clean.

Yields: 8 servings.

Happy Baking!