It's been about 5 years since I was lucky enough to dig into a slice of my pal Diana's drool-worthy apple cake, and when I tasted this today....oh, man. There was much more going on than I even remembered. Appleness, like juicy red and dangling from the tree. Pecans. Cinnamon--a proper, generous amount of it. But what really flipped me out was that I'd totally forgotten about the caramel glaze. When Diana sent her recipe a couple of weeks ago, it just said "glaze"--nothing about the caramel nature of it, nothing about the science project that it truly is (although an easy one; I have tips!). By glancing at the ingredients (sugar, butter, buttermilk, soda), you'd have to be a pretty frequent baker or candy-meister to say, "Oh yeah--that's caramel." I thought it was going to be a light, translucent, pouring glaze like my mom used to use on lemon jello cake. I was totally wrong. Eating this cake is like eating a caramel apple that somebody thoughtfully dosed with cinnamon and pecans, but it's a lot less messy and goes great with coffee. It's inspiring.
diana's apple cake with caramel glaze, a.k.a. the eighth wonder of the world
pumpkin squares, squared
I come from a long line of German women who feel compelled to produce baked goods pretty much nonstop from October to January. I'm not even fudging this fact a bit. I refer to the phenomenon as "extreme baking," or the condition during which our collective kitchens are completely dusted with flour and sugar, all of our tupperware containers have been filled with sweets and handed over to neighbors, and our feet ache from standing over too many mixing bowls, yet we continue to bake without ceasing. I suffer from the condition, and I don't even have a sweet tooth.
making soup sing: chicken minestrone with crispy chickpeas
Soup weather, a.k.a. my favorite season, has arrived! Once the high dips below 90 for several days in a row, I consider it official. There are so many delectable soups to rustle up and dig into, though, and it's really hard for me, as a devoted soupster, to choose which to make first. This year, I settled on minestrone for its calming, vegetableish effects, but I had an ulterior motive...I wanted to try frying some chickpeas, and I decided they'd come in handy as a crunchy crouton for the soup. I'd planned to include chickpeas in my minestrone, so what could be easier than reserving a few chickpeas from the can and frying them up?
