Apple Nubby Cake

I'm not sure if you have noticed, but I like apples and baking apples into desserts. I also have a lot of frozen apples that need to be baked, so this works out. Soon it will be strawberry season and that will give me a break from the apple recipes. Anyhow, this is yet another apple cake recipe. I have no idea why it is called "Apple Nubby Cake", but it is an apple cake regardless of what “nubby” refers to.

I had to alter this recipe a bit during my baking venture, but you don't have to. I left out the nutmeg and added a bit more cinnamon. The people I feed my baked goods to don't like nutmeg, but since they like cinnamon it is an easy problem to solve. I also didn't leave skins on the apples since they were peeled before they were frozen several months ago. If you like nuts, you can probably add nuts to this cake without a problem. The resulting cake is soft with a bit of a crunchy crust. It reminds me of a dump cake.

Apple Nubby Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Recipe)

2 T shortening

1 C sugar

1/2 t nutmeg

1/2 t cinnamon

1/2 t salt

1 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1 egg, well beaten

1 t vanilla

1 C flour, sifted once

2 C diced unpeeled apples

All of the mixing can be done in a medium sized mixing bowl with a fork. First, mix together the shortening and sugar until well blended and no chunks of shortening remain.

Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Stir it all together.

In a cup, lightly beat together the egg and vanilla. Pour this into the dry ingredients and blend.

Add the sifted flour. I just put a cup of flour into my sifter and sifted it directly into the bowl. Again, mix it all up.

Now you can add the apples (and nuts, if you wish). Mix. The ingredients will seem dry and, if you are like me, you will worry that the recipe will fail. It will not. The apples release juice as they cook which is absorbed by the dry ingredients.

Smush the combined mess into a greased and floured pan. I used an 8x8 inch pan. Bake this at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 40ish minutes. It is kind of hard to stab it with a toothpick to test the doneness because the apples are always kind of gooey.

After removal from the oven, let the cake cool for 10 minutes. Remove the cake from the pan and cool some more. Serve warm or cold. The recipe claims it can be frozen for a few months after baking.

Enjoy!

Cloverleaf Dinner Rolls

Homemade bread is absolutely wonderful. My grandma used to make bread all the time, but finding the recipes she used hasn't been easy. I remember her making dinner rolls and these may be them. Or at least one of the recipes!

I'm learning that bread isn't as difficult to bake as it seems. The bread baking process tends to be intimidating, at least to me, so I'm hesitant to try new bread recipes. I have used yeast enough now to understand the process a little better, but I'm still not a pro. There is a variation of this recipe to make cinnamon rolls. And, since practice makes perfect, I think I should attempt that at some point.

Cloverleaf Dinner Rolls (Printer-friendly PDF Recipe)

3 to 3 1/2 C unsifted flour

1 package dry active yeast

1 1/4 C milk

1/4 C sugar

1/4 C shortening

1 t salt

1 egg

Place 3 cups of flour in the mixing bowl and sprinkle the yeast on top. Set aside.

In a small sauce pan, heat the milk, sugar, shortening, and salt to somewhere between 120 degrees and 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pour the heated milk mixture into the yeasted flour along with the egg. Beat this together on a low speed for 30 seconds. Scrape the sides of the bowl and then beat on a high speed for 3 minutes.

If you are using a fancy mixer, attach the dough hook. Otherwise, proceed by hand.

Add and mix in enough flour to make a soft dough. Add a bit less than 3 cups to start with and slowly add more. Knead the dough until well combined.

Place the dough into an oiled bowl. Flip it over to coat the entire dough blob with oil. Cover and let rise until it doubles in size. This will take at least an hour.

Punch the dough down and toss it onto a lightly floured surface. Let it rest for 10 minutes.

Break the dough up into small balls of dough and place three of these into each cup of a greased muffin pan. (This recipe should make approximately 24 dinner rolls.) After all of the muffin pans have a trio of dough blobs in them, cover the pans and let the dough rise for 30 to 45 minutes. They should double in size during this time.

Bake the rolls in an oven preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 or so minutes. The rolls will light brown when done.

Remove the rolls from the oven and then from the muffin pans. Serve. Eat with butter if desired.

Enjoy!

Banana Bread 2

There are a lot of recipes for banana bread in existence. Most of these recipes are basically the same with a bit more or a bit less of a certain ingredient. I grew up eating the banana bread recipe that I posted a few months ago. That recipe is good and I never had the need to find a different recipe. However, lately I've wanted a recipe that did not use shortening in it!

This recipe does not have shortening in it. It has butter and sour milk instead. I may like this new banana bread better than the banana bread that I've known and loved for so long. I'm not sure if it is any healthier than the other, but it has a different flavor and texture. Maybe I’ll make both of them at the same time for a more official taste test.

Banana Bread (Printer-friendly PDF Recipe)

1 1/2 C sugar

1/2 C butter

1/4 C sour milk

1 1/2 t soda

1/4 C warm water

3 ripe bananas, smashed

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 C nuts, chopped (optional!)

3 C flour

Cream together the butter and the sugar until nice and fluffy looking.

Stir the soda into the warm water. Add the sour milk, soda water, bananas, and eggs to the creamed sugar. Mix this all together until well blended. 

You can do this all at once or break it into steps. Either way, it should look like this after all the wet ingredients are mixed in.

Mix in the flour at a low speed. Mix in those chopped nuts at this point if you want them in the bread. Mix until nice and combined.

Split the batter between two loaf pans. Lightly grease the pans if needed. Bake at 350 for 50 to 60 minutes.

Let cool, slice, and eat.

Enjoy!

Easy Coffee Cake

For me to consider a recipe to be "easy", I have to be able to make it only using a bowl and a wooden spoon. Wooden spoons are the best kitchen utensil. (If you disagree, you can claim a wooden fork to be the best.) This coffee cake recipe fits my definition of easy. It also tastes pretty good.

This recipe doesn't make a lot of coffee cake, just a nice little loaf. If you are having a few people over, I would recommend having this for a snack. Bake it so that the coffee cake is coming out of the oven as people arrive. It tastes much better warm. The amount of cinnamon and brown sugar used is up to you, so you can make it as cinnamony or sugary as you want.

The hardest part of this recipe was figuring out how much butter "half an egg" is. I set an egg next to a stick of butter and guessed. An egg seems to be 3 T of butter, so I used 1 1/2 T butter for this recipe. However, eggs come in different sizes. It doesn't even specify what species of egg to use. An egg from a chicken isn't the same size as an egg from an ostrich. So, if you really like buttery foods, you can make an argument to use more butter in the recipe.

Easy Coffee Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

1/2 C sugar

1 1/2 T Butter (or size of 1/2 egg)

1/2 C milk

1 C flour

1 t baking powder

brown sugar and cinnamon to taste

1 T butter

Toss the softened half egg of butter in a mixing bowl with the sugar. Stir until well blended.

Pour in the milk. Stir well. This may be a bit lumpy, but that is okay.

Add the flour and baking powder. Stir until combined. The batter will be thick and gritty.

Scoop the batter into a well greased loaf pan. Break up the 1 T of butter and place this on top of the batter. Now sprinkle some brown sugar and cinnamon on top.

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Poke it with a toothpick to make sure it is finished baking. Let cool for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Enjoy!

Sponge Cake

If you want to eat something with the texture of a sponge but much better flavor, then this is the cake for you. It is rather easy to make and doesn't involve any non-standard baking ingredients. Your sponge can even have any flavor you want as long as you have the extract for the flavor desired.

I have never made a sponge cake before this baking venture. The cake seems like a more dense version of an angel food cake. I used vanilla extract for my sponge cake even though the recipe calls for orange extract. I think I would have liked it better if I added lemon juice instead. I'm not really sure what people do with sponge cake. Do they frost them? Do they pour fruit and juice over a slice? If you know, please tell me!

Sponge Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

4 eggs, separated

3 T cold water

1/2 t salt

1/2 t cream of tartar

1 1/2 C granulated sugar

1 3/4 C sifted flour

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 C boiling water

1 t orange extract

In a mixing bowl, beat together the egg yolks and cold water for 10 minutes. I used a medium speed. The egg yolks will be nice and fluffy (the soft peak stage) after 10 minutes.

If you have another mixer, beat togeter the egg whites, salt, and cream of tartar until stiff. If you don't have multiple mixers, just prepare the ingredients for later.

In yet another bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, and baking powder.

Once the egg yolks have beat for 10 minutes, alternate adding the dry ingredients and the boiling water. I made three additions of dry ingredients and two addtions of water. Stir between each addition until well blended.

(At this point, clean the beaters and beat the egg whites until they are stiff if you only have one mixer. Yes, I know, not everyone has a stand mixer and a hand mixer.)

Fold the stiff egg whites into the egg yolk batter until just blended. The batter will be nice and fluffy.

Pour this nice and fluffy batter into an ungreased angel food cake tube pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. Check at 50 minutes to see if it is done. My cake only took 52 minutes to bake.

Note: I'm not sure if this kind of cake requires it, but I cooled the cake (in the pan) upside down on top of a narrow neck bottle. This is what you do for angel food cake so it doesn't fall. It can't hurt to do this for the sponge cake, too!

Enjoy!