Peach Cupcakes - Nope, Cake - with Brown Sugar Frosting

One of my closest friends is due with her first baby, a little girl, at Thanksgiving. This weekend we celebrated that with a small shower hosted by another of my friends. The hostess put together an amazing pancake bar and I offered to provide some sweets. And it was almost a train wreck.

I live in a different city than where I grew up. I'm lucky, though, because its just a 6 hour drive (or a 45 minute flight) home, which means I get to be there for all the little things. Like baby showers. But the relevance to the story is that when I got to my dad's house on Friday evening I had a lot on the schedule: figure out what to make, pick up what I needed at the grocery store, and make it.

The first thing to do seemed easy enough, but I'm an indecisive girl and just could not decide what to make. I asked my siblings, the hostess, my boyfriend and never came to a conclusion. In the end, I made everything.

I took my brother to the grocery store with me. I knocked over a giant display of spices. He laughed and I bought him horchata.

Then I came home and got down to business. First I stuck some of this in the oven, which I've done plenty of times before, and it threw up all over the place. Which its never done before. I had to turn off the oven, let it cool off, and scrape half-caramelized dulce de leche off the bottom of the oven. Disgusting.

When I got back on track I got on a roll. I started making the batter for this amazing peach cake, and when it was done I opened the cupboards to grab my dad's cupcake tins. I couldn't find them. My bother told me that not too long ago, my dad had thrown away a whole bunch of kitchen stuff that he didn't use. Including the cupcake tins AND all but one cake tin! I ended up baking a three-layer cake using one cake tin. It was special.

The whole story is to tell you people that I worked hard for this cake, and it was worth it. The frosting especially is going to make it into my regular cake rotation because brown sugar plus cream cheese? Count me in!

Peach Cake with Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from here


Peach Cake 
3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Pinch nutmeg
3/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, sour cream or full-fat yogurt
4 large peaches, peeled, cored, and chopped small

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare cake tins (I suggest using more than one!).

In a small saucepan, combine peaches with 1/4 cup of water. Simmer over medium heat, stirring often, until peaches being to break down. Set aside to cool.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg and reserve. Cream the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla. Gently mix in the buttermilk. Slowly add the dry ingredients and fold in the peaches.

Bake for 18 to 22 minutes.


Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup heavy cream

In a small bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, cornstarch and powdered sugar. In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add the dry ingredients, heavy cream, and vanilla, beating until frosting is smooth and light.

Roasted Pumpkin Soup

My family, like many others, spends our holidays with a few other families. We rotate venues and change menus every year, but some things always stay the same. Christmas Eve, for example, is always at my family's house. We always serve seafood bisque, pork pies, and carrot cake. Its just tradition.

A few years ago at Thanksgiving the hostess served a pumpkin sage soup. I'm usually not one for pumpkin, but this soup was out of this world. Since then, regardless of where we are gathered, she has brought soup over as a first course. And since then, regardless of season, I've had dreams about this soup.

It has finally cooled down - and rained! - in Southern California and I've been feeling fall-ish. I want to wear boots and cute coats and eat soup. I attempted, mostly in vain, to recreate the famous soup. I wasn't successful, but this version is quite delicious all on its own.


Apple Pumpkin Soup
Very Loosely adapted from here

1/4 cup olive oil
1 small-to-medium pumpkin
5 medium apples
2 tbps olive oil
1 onion
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 tbps chopped garlic
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 tsp nutmeg
salt and pepper
applesauce
sour cream or creme fraiche

 

Preheat oven to 400F. Peel and roughly chop apples and pumpkin. Toss with 1/4 cup olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast until soft but not mushy.

Heat 2 tbps olive oil in a dutch oven. Sweat chopped onions, carrots, and celery. Add garlic and saute until all vegetables are soft. Add the stock and the roasted pumpkin and apple. Blend, either with an immersion blender or in batches until the entire soup is smooth. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Serve with applesauce and sour cream.

Ratatouille

Ratatouille
Adapted from here

1 onion, finely chopped
3 tbsp chopped garlic
3 cups tomato sauce
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 large eggplant
3 zucchini
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
4 potatoes
fresh thyme
Salt and pepper


Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Pour tomato into the bottom of a glass 9x13 baking dish. Sprinkle the garlic and onion into the sauce, stir in one tbsp of olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper.

Slice the vegetables using a mandoline, approximately 1/16-inch thick. Arrange slices of vegetables in rows in the baking dish, alternating vegetables. Drizzle the remaining olive oil over the vegetables and season with thyme, salt, and pepper

Cover dish with aluminum foil and bake for approximately 45 minutes, until vegetables cooked, but not totally limp.

Torta de Mele

Torta di Mele
Apple, lemon, and fig cake

adapted from here

• 50g ground walnuts or almonds, or some plain flour
• 600g granny smith (you must use a tart cooking apple or your cake will be too sweet….trust me) apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
• 1 lemon, juice and zest
• 115g unsalted butter, melted
• 3 eggs
• 165g (3/4c) dark brown sugar
• 110g (1/2c) raw or regular caster sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 100ml milk
• 150g (1c) plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• about 100g dried figs, finely chopped
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Lemon syrup

• about 150g raw or white sugar or 180g honey
• splash (about 1 Tbs) water
• juice of half a lemon (or whole lemon if you want it tart-er)

Generously grease the sides of an 8″ springform cake tin (up to the very top), line the base with greased baking paper or foil (then place greased ring on top), and dust with ground nuts or 1 Tbs flour. Rotate pan and tap to distribute the nuts/flour evenly across every surface of the pan. Set aside.
Combine apple slices and lemon juice and zest in a bowl and toss to coat the slices. Set aside. Preheat oven to 180C (355F)
In a medium sized bowl whisk eggs, 110g of the dark brown sugar, all the caster sugar, and vanilla, until paler, creamy and thick. Stir in melted butter, then flour, baking powder and milk, until fully incorporated, but do not keep mixing once fully incorporated.
Pour a third of the batter into your cake pan and spread gently so the layer is even. Arrange a third of the apples as a single (do not do a double layer all the way around) layer on top of the batter. Scatter with half the figs. Repeat. Top with last third of the batter, then finish with apple slices.
Rub remaining dark brown sugar and cinnamon together, then scatter over the apples.
Bake cake for 1 hour and 20 minutes (check at the 1 hour 15min mark), or until a skewer inserted comes out clear (it will have some moist bits on it). Cool for twenty minutes in the pan before running a knife around the cake and removing the ring. Then let cool completely before removing foil and base.
To make syrup, simmer sugar and water for a few minutes over medium heat in a very small saucepan, until sugar is completely dissolved. Stir through lemon juice. Pour syrup over while hot.
Serve with double cream, ice cream, whipped cream or mascarpone.

Roasted Green Chile Enchilada Sauce

Whenever I go out to eat Mexican food I always face a dilemma: whether to order red sauce or green sauce. I always regret that I can't try both! So after I made red enchilada sauce earlier this year, the most natural next step was to make a green sauce. Pretty soon I'll be whipping up special dishes for myself with one half red sauce and the other half green :)

Tomatillo Enchilada Sauce

10 medium tomatillos, husked and washed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large poblano chile
2 jalapeno chiles
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1/2 cup water stock
salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup cilantro
1/2 lime juiced

First roast the chiles and tomatillos: Preheat the broiler and put the chiles on a baking sheet. Broil until black and blistered on all sides. Remove from the oven and place in a tupperware. Allow to sit for 5 minutes, then remove and peel. Discard skin, core and seeds.

Heat oven to 450F and place tomatillos on a sheet pan. Roast until lightly browned on one side (about 5 minutes), turn and roast until evenly browned and starting to blister.

Heat a sauce pan until medium and add oil, onion and garlic. Cook, stirring regularly for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Add tomatillos, chile, oregano, water or stock, and a big pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to an easy simmer and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring regularly. Stir in cilantro and lime. Blend in batches and simmer until the desired consistency is reached.

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels

There are a few things we've gained since moving back to the west coast. Perfect weather, for example. Good mexican food. Beaches that can actually be enjoyed. On the other hand, there are plenty of things we miss. The walk-ability of the city. Reasonable public transportation. And all types of food; mostly though, pizza and bagels.

I've covered my attempts to recreate the thin crust pizzas of New York City. So far I haven't been successful, but its a work in progress. I've made quite a few pizzas so far and, although they aren't anything like what can be had in Brooklyn, you certainly won't hear me complaining about all the pizzas I've had to eat along the way.

Which brings us to bagels. The bagels in NYC are incredible. There was a corner store just down the street from our old apartment that made bagels fresh, every morning. If we were up early enough we could smell them from our balcony - but we were very rarely up at 4am! 

These bagels were just one of the hundreds of bagel offerings throughout the boroughs - served warm, with a large schmear of cream cheese. After New York bagels, its hard to find a good substitute. So I did what any good food blogger would do - I tried to make my own.

We are an open-bagel household; we love all kinds. Bagels have their place: everything or onion bagels for sandwiches, plain bagels for lox, etc etc. Our favorite bagel, though, is the cinnamon raisin. Its the perfect amount of sweet for breakfast and is good with cream cheese, butter, or even peanut butter. When it was time to decide what kind of bagel I would be making, cinnamon raisin was an easy choice.

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels

Adapted from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice

Sponge
1 teaspoon instant yeast
4 cups unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
2 1/2 cups water, room temperature

Dough
1 teaspoon instant yeast
3 3/4 cups unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
5 tablespoons sugar
2 3/4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons malt powder or 1 tablespoon dark or light malt syrup, honey, or brown sugar
2 cups loosely packed raisins, rinsed with warm water to remove surfact sugar, acid, and natural wild yeast

To Finish
1 tablespoon baking soda
Cornmeal or semolina flour for dusting
Melted butter for brushing (optional)
Cinnamon sugar for sprinkling (optional)

First, make the sponge. Mix the yeast and flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the water, stirring only until it forms a smooth, sticky batter. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 2 hours, or until it becomes foamy and bubbly. The sponge should double in size and collapse when the bowl is tapped.

To make the dough, add the rest of the yeast to the sponge and stir. Add all but 1/2 to 1 cup of the flour, and all of the cinnamon, sugar, salt and malt. Mix on low speed with the dough hook until the ingredients form a ball, then slowly work in the remaining flour until the dough is stiff. Add the raisins at the end of mixing.

Transfer the dough to a countertop and knead for at least 10 minutes. The dough should be firm, but still smooth and pliable. If the dough is too dry or rips, add a few drops of water and continue kneading. If the dough is tacky or sticky, add more flour. The kneaded dough should feel satiny and pliable but not be tacky.

Immediately divide the dough into equal pieces - 12 (4 1/2 ounce) pieces for super sized bagels, 16 (3.375 ounce) regular-sized bagels, or 24 (2.25 ounce) perfectly smaller bagels. Form the pieces into rolls.

Cover the rolls with a damp towel and rest for 20 minutes.

Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper and lightly spray with oil. Poke a hole in the center of a ball of dough and rotate your thumb to widen the hole. The dough should be stretched as evenly possible around the bagel.

Place the shaped pieces two inches apart on the pans. Mist the bagels lightly with spray oil and cover each pan loosely with plastic wrap. Let sit at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Check to see if the bagels are ready by using the “float test”. Fill a bowl with cool to room-temperature water. The bagels are ready if they float within 10 seconds of being put into the water. Take a bagel and test it. If it floats, return the bagel to the pan, dry it, then cover the pan and put it in the refrigerator overnight. If it does not float, return the bagel to the pan and continue to proof the dough at room temperature. Check the dough every 10 minutes or so until a tester floats

 The following day preheat the oven to 500°F with both racks in the middle of the oven. Boil a large pot of water and add the baking soda. Sprinkle parchment-lined sheet pans with cornmeal or semolina flour.

Remove the bagels from the refrigerator and gently drop them into the water, boiling only as many as comfortably fit. They should float within 10 seconds. After 1 minute, flip them over and boil for another minute.

Place the boiled bagels back on the pans and bake for five minutes, then rotate the pans 180-degrees. Lower the oven temperature to 450°F and bake for another 5 minutes, or until the bagels are light golden brown.

Remove the bagels from the oven and let cool on a rack before serving.