Fresh Apple Cake With Brown Sugar Glaze

I love my neighborhood. We've lived here a year and a half now, and I've never once regretted our decision to move here. There are so many young families, a ton of families from our church live near us, our neighbors are all super friendly. It's such a complete opposite of our last neighborhood where we couldn't leave toys out in our backyard or the kids across the street would climb over our wall and steal them. Seriously. Anyway, we recently had a neighborhood picnic put on by the HOA. They provided lunch and residents were asked to bring desserts. There were pony rides, a bounce house...it was super fun. Since I'd been going crazy with Pinterest.com (see, I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm obsessed with it...I'm probably a few pins away from an intervention) I figured I'd make one of the desserts I'd pinned. This one seemed especially tasty and I had all the ingredients for it.

Fresh Apple Cake With Brown Sugar Glaze
Source: Lick The Bowl Good blog via Pinterest.com

Apple Cake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups finely chopped apples
1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped (optional)

Brown Sugar Glaze:
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
3 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon heavy cream

For the cake: Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch pan (round or square) and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Stir with a whisk to mix everything together.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs with a hand mixer til light in color and foamy. Add the oil and vanilla and beat well.

Stir in the flour mixture with a spoon and continue stirring the batter til the flour disappears. Add the apples and nuts (if using) and stir to mix them into the batter.

Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Place the hot cake on a wire cake. While it's still hot, prepare the glaze.

For the glaze: Combine all the ingredients into a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture comes to a gentle boil. Cook for 3-5 minutes.

Spoon the hot glaze over the still hot-from-the-oven cake. Let the glazed cake cool completely before serving straight from the pan.

*****

I had to improvise a bit for the glaze because I didn't have cream, but I used some half and half instead. It probably wasn't quite the same, but it seemed to do the trick. I was a little disappointed when the boys and I went to pick out dessert that no one had cut into my cake yet. So I figured I'd be the first. I was really pleased with how it came out--dense and sweet and awesome, basically. This is a great fall cake. And I loved that the glaze went on the cake while they were both still hot. One of the things I hate about cake making is having to wait for it to cool before you can frost it, so this solved that problem.

Don't mind the other dessert remnants on the plate there.

Beef Bulgogi

Did I mention that we just moved Boy #2 from his crib into a big boy bed? I'm freakin' exhausted. He apparently thinks it means he can get up as many times as he wants at night and come wake me up and get up at the ass crack of dawn in the morning. *yawn* I'm a tired mama. Last night I got 6.5 hours of sleep, one of which was spent laying on the floor of his bedroom. Ugh. I know Boy #1 took awhile to adjust to not being confined when he slept, but I don't remember how long it took. I don't really feel capable of getting anything accomplished around my house today (I changed into jammies after my post-gym shower), so I'm going to update my blog.

By the way, I created a Facebook Page for my little blog here. There's a link over on the right sidebar where you can like it from here or come visit me on there. I don't really know what I'm going to do with it, I'd just been thinking about doing it for awhile and today seemed like a good day.

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, which I'm sure directly correlates to my lack of sleep, and meal planning just wasn't exciting for this week. I pulled a cookbook off my shelf that my mother-in-law had gotten me for Christmas a couple years ago and flipped through it hoping for ideas. She was a teacher at a Christian high school in San Antonio (she just retired!), and it was a fundraising project from the senior class I think. I love cookbooks where people submit their own recipes because who's going to submit something that sucks? This recipe called for flank steak, but London broil was on sale, so I thought it would be good. Bulgogi, according to the recipe intro, is a Korean treatment for steak that has very wide appeal to western palates and is remarkably easy to make. Also sometimes written as Pulgogi, Bulgogi literally means "fire meat" although this refers more to the cooking method than the spiciness of the dish. So there you go. I have no idea how to pronounce it. Bul-go-gee? Bul-gah-gee? Something else entirely?

Beef Bulgogi

2 lb flank steak or sirloin
1/2 c. packed dark brown sugar
3/4 c. soy sauce (preferably low salt)
1 Tbsp sesame oil
Dash of red pepper flakes or ground cayenne
5 or 6 green onions, sliced
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed

For cooking:
3 Tbsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp peanut or vegetable oil

For thickening marinade/sauce:
1 Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 1 Tbsp water

Trim any visible fat and sinuous tissue from the uncooked steak and wrap the meat in plastic wrap or a Ziploc bag and place in the freezer for half an hour to partially freeze meat. Remove meat from the freezer and slice as thinly as possible across the grain. Lay out meat slices in a single layer in a low, glass or ceramic casserole dish. As you cover the bottom once, crumble some of the brown sugar over the uncooked meat and continue layering meat and brown sugar until all the steak is sliced and the sugar used.

Marinade: In a bowl, mix soy sauce, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, red pepper, onions, rice vinegar, and garlic. Pour marinade over sugared meat and cover to marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Can be marinated all day or even overnight if using low sat soy sauce.

Heat a large skillet on medium high heat and mix the remaining sesame oil with the peanut or vegetable oil. Working in small batches to preserve the heat of the pan, use a little of the mixed oils and quickly fry the steak until just cooked medium rare. Remove cooked slices to a warm serving platter and repeat the process until the whole batch of meat is cooked. use more oil if necessary. After meat is cooked, reduce heat to medium and add leftover marinade to skillet. Bring to gentle simmer and stir in cornstarch/water mixture. Stir while thickening and pour over cooked meat.

*****

The marinade smelled fantastic. I love the smell of sesame oil. As I was cooking the meat Boy #1 kept saying, "Mommy dinner smells so yummy!" It ended up being super tasty. I think our meat ended up being more on the medium or medium well side because I wasn't really sure how long to let it cook before flipping it, but it was still good. The sauce on top was really good, too. Since it had raw meat marinating in it, I heated it to boiling just to be safe. We all really liked this. Boy #1 complained at one point that he was getting full and asked if he could just eat half of what was left on his plate. I said sure, but then a couple minutes later he and I realized he'd eaten all of it! We just had the meat with some frozen Asian blend vegetables, but I think the meat would be really good in lettuce wrap form, too. I'll definitely make this again!

Sadly, none of the pictures I took of the cooked meat turned out. :(

Rick Bayless Barbecue Baked Beans

Late last year I checked out a cookbook from the library written by Rick Bayless and his daughter Lanie, Rick and Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventure. I loved what I saw when I flipped through it, and I ended up buying it on Amazon for $10. Pretty good deal I thought! It's not just Mexican recipes like most of his cookbooks, it covers other ethnic cuisines from places they have traveled as a family--Spain, Morocco, France, Thailand--and recipes from the barbecue restaurant Rick's family had when he was growing up. I'm so glad I thought of that section when I was looking for recipes to make for Brisketfest 2010.

Hickory House Barbecue Baked Beans
Copyright 2004, Rick and Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures

1/2 large green or red bell pepper, cut in small pieces
Two 15-ounce cans pinto beans or navy beans, drained and rinsed (or 3 to 3-1/2 cups home-cooked pinto or navy beans well seasoned with salt)
1 cup barbecue sauce, store bought or homemade
1/2 cup water or bean cooking liquid if using home-cooked beans
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 375.

In an 8-inch square baking pan, mix together everything except Worcestershire sauce. Stir well to dissolve sugar completely. Dribble Worcestershire over top. Bake until slightly thickened, glazed and browned on top, and bubbling vigorously around the edges, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Let cool slightly before serving.

*****

I have never been a fan of baked beans, except for a recipe my friend Rebecca makes that has bacon and bacon drippings in it. Who wouldn't like that?! Okay, maybe a vegetarian, but even then I think they'd secretly enjoy it (if they weren't getting sick from it). I figured I have yet to be disappointed by a Rick Bayless recipe, so I was hoping this would turn me on to baked beans.

Man alive, did it ever!! These beans are amazing--so easy to put together, so full of taste and flavor. Yum!! I much prefer making these from just plain pinto beans instead of doctoring up a can of baked beans. This is definitely my go-to baked beans recipe now, and I may even start putting it in my meal plans as a side dish!

Beans ready to be thrown into oven (or gently placed, rather, so they didn't spill everywhere):


Finished product...sorry it's so blurry!

Barefoot Contessa's Caramelized Butternut Squash

This past week Barefoot Bloggers had a Bonus Recipe Challenge (BRC) where five recipes were posted that were optional to try throughout the week. One of them I'd made before--Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars--and didn't have all the ingredients on hand to make them. There was a Potato Leek Soup I thought about making, but my friend Jen B. had made it before and wasn't impressed, so I figured it wasn't worth it. There was a chicken chili recipe that sounded good, but I already had minestrone slated for one night during the week and thought two soups might be overkill. We've been on a big butternut squash kick lately, so I thought this one sounded perfect!

Caramelized Butternut Squash
1999, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, All rights reserved

2 medium butternut squash (4 to 5 pounds total)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut off and discard the ends of each butternut squash. Peel the squash, cut them in half lengthwise, and remove the seeds. Cut the squash into 1 1/4 to 1 1/2-inch cubes and place them on a baking sheet. Add the melted butter, brown sugar, salt, and pepper. With clean hands, toss all the ingredients together and spread in a single layer on the baking sheet. Roast for 45 to 55 minutes, until the squash is tender and the glaze begins to caramelize. While roasting, turn the squash a few times with a spatula, to be sure it browns evenly. Taste for seasonings and serve hot.

*****

I only used one squash, and it was plenty for a side dish for my family. This was REALLY tasty!! The husband loved it, I think butternut squash is his new favorite food. The boy didn't really eat a whole lot of it, but the baby liked it too. This was such an easy way to make a tasty and pretty healthy side dish. I actually went to Trader Joe's again and bought two more squash. I think I may use one of them to make this again sometime this coming week...it was that tasty!!

Balsamic Chicken Drumsticks

first let me say that one of the shift keys on my computer isn't working, so I'm having a hard time capitalizing some letters. i was recently looking through my freezer and saw some chicken drumsticks that I had forgotten were out there. I got really excited when I remembered this recipe. We had only had it once before, but I liked it. Plus this time I can correct the mistakes I made last time!

(By the way, this will be my last post for awhile. The husband's birthday is Friday, so tomorrow night we're getting pizza for dinner, and then he and I are heading out for a weekend SANS KIDS!!!!!! You have no idea how excited I am!! Or if you have kids, maybe you do have an idea...)

Balsamic Chicken Drumsticks

I wanted to have some kind of couscous side with it, but wasn't sure what to do. I didn't see anything on RecipeZaar.com that looked especially good, so I checked allrecipes.com and found something that sounded good. I'll just link to it:

Company Couscous

I don't have red peppers but I do have green, so I figure I'll just substitute that.