dessert Archives - Kitchen Conundrum

Baked Apples

I’ve never been a fan of baked apples. As a matter of fact, I may actually hate them. It’s one of those things you get at your grandma’s house. (No offense to grandmas!) You’d have dinner at her house and you ate everything on your plate just so you could have dessert, because that’s the rule. You’re praying for a big piece of deep, rich chocolate cake with heaps of sugary icing or some warm, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies or a triple scoop ice cream sundae and then, she sits a baked apple in front of you… and it’s got raisins in it, and bits of weird fruit and its brown and shriveled and mushy. And you try not to cry. Because it would rude not to eat it and you’d be admonished into sitting there until it was finished anyways because it’s such a “special treat” that she’d made for you.

So you can understand my disdain for baked apples. It’s not something I’d ever make on my own. However, since it’s this week’s recipe for French Fridays with Dorie, and I am committed to the task, I made them.

Well, now I am an adult and I get to choose which fruits actually go into the recipe- no raisins in sight! (I will eat a few, once in a blue moon, otherwise, they are not really something I have in the pantry.) I also get to cook the apples until just spoon tender and not to the consistency of a mealy, almost applesauce like hot fruit. These apples are peeled too, so they don’t seem so ugly and shriveled when cooked.

These small changes made a big difference.

The filling is a simple mix of dried fruits, nuts and spices. I used dried mango, papaya, apricots, and dates. I chopped some walnuts and mixed them with the fruit, added some honey and a few dashes of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. There was actually quite a bit of this filling left over and I have saved it to top my morning oatmeal for the next few days.

The recipe said it could be served with ice cream, crème fraiche or whipped cream. Instead, I chose to serve it with a dollop of mascarpone that I mixed with a bit of vanilla sugar. I absolutely love mascarpone on baked peaches and other fruits (plus mixed in to various other dishes- like last week’s mac & cheese). It’s almost a “super food” in my book since it goes so well with nearly everything! The mascarpone was the true savior for these.

These apples were much better than I expected. I didn’t hate them. But they were not nearly of the same caliber of the Long, Slow Apples we made last year. Those were amazing! Sweet, velvety and delicious! These were fine, but really, it was no comparison to those other apples. Everyone here took a bite and turned their noses up. Spoiled! Apple pie, apple fritters, or even apple turnovers would have seen a better reception.

This is a dish I will share with my neighbors. I hate to let food go waste and since I would be the only one to eat them, off they go. One is plenty for me.

So that said, I won’t be making this recipe again. I also will not ever torture my kids and their future kids by making them sit at the table and eat baked apples when there must be some luscious chocolate dessert around someplace.

Please don’t let my prejudice discourage you from making this if baked apples are your thing. The recipe works and the flavor is quite good. They are also very pretty. You’d probably love them! Really! They are just not my thing.

While I cannot share the actual recipe, you can (and should!) buy the book and cook along with us. It’s great fun! Every Friday we make a new recipe. Looking forward to next weeks! For details and to see how others are recreating the dishes from this awesome book, check out the FFWD site.

Buy the book:

While the mysterious origins of Red Velvet Cake are as varied and as deep as creatures of the Red Sea, it’s been brought back, it’s in style and it’s, apparently, here to stay.

Which, is fine by me. What could be bad about a chocolate cake, a devil’s food cake for that matter, with a bit of red food coloring. Nothing at all. Except don’t even think about wearing white anywhere near it! That red coloring is very much like a red velvet cloth that’s been put in the laundry with your whites. But, as you eat one Whoopie Pie, your mind will drift away and you won’t even care that your best white towels are now a rosy shade of pink.

Share a Red Velvet Whoopie pie with a loved one this Valentine’s Day.

This wonderfully moist and rich cake recipe has been adapted from The Joy of Baking.

For the Cakes:

Ingredients

2 ½ cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbs cocoa powder

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 ½ cups white sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk

1 tbs liquid red food coloring

1 tsp white distilled vinegar

1 tsp baking soda

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Prepare a Whoopie Pie pan or a shallow baking dish with spray oil and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl sift together the flour, salt, and cocoa powder. Set aside.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, or a large bowl with your hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

In another small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and the red food coloring. Try not to splatter, as red food coloring has a way of staining anything it touches. Permanently!

With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and color buttermilk to the butter mixture, beating until all the ingredients are well combined.

In a small cup mix the vinegar and baking soda. (Science Experiment!) The mixture will fizz but won’t overflow the cup (Darn! That’ll be for another day.) since it’s not so much. Quickly fold into the cake batter.

Spoon the batter into the prepared Whoopie Pie pan or into the prepared cake pan. The batter should only be filled about 1/4 of the way up the sides. You want a thin cake.

Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean. Cool the cakes in their pans for 10 minutes then remove them to a wire rack and let cool completely.

Meanwhile, let’s make the filling!

For the Filling:

Ingredients

6 tbs unsalted butter, softened

1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 jar marshmallow crème (I used the regular white, but you can also use Raspberry or Strawberry marshmallow crèmes- fun for Valentine’s Day!)

2 tsp vanilla

Method

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, salt and the marshmallow crème until smooth. Add in the vanilla and mix well. You can now spoon the mixture into a piping bag if you want, to be used to fill the whoopie pies or you can just use a spoon to fill the centers. Refrigerate any unused crème bringing it back to room temperature before attempting to pipe any more cakes.

Assemble The Whoopie Pies

If you used a Whoopie Pie pan, you can just use two of the individual cakes and sandwich them together with filling in between. However, if your cakes have too much height, or you want to get more pies (double!), you can just slice off the tops of each cake, horizontally, and fill the centers and return the tops to the bottoms. It’s really up to you. For the ones pictured here, we just sliced off the tops. We are very glad we did too, because they all went quickly.

If you used a shallow cake pan, you can use a cookie cutter to cut out your shapes, or twist an inverted glass to make rounds of cake. Or you can just slice out pieces if you have a steady hand and can create matching tops and bottoms. (They can be close since crème will be in the middle!)

Once you have all your tops and bottoms laid out, pipe or spoon the filling into the center of the cooled pies on one side. Place it’s matching part on and you are ready to eat!

To store: Place in a single layer on a piece of wax paper. Because the cake is so moist, it has a tendency to stick, peeling a layer of cake off. So if you want one pretty side, be sure to make sure they are stored in only one layer.

Baked Apples Filled with Fruit and Nuts- French Fridays with Dorie

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies Recipe