Apple Kuchen

It may be a new year but we've still got a Recipe Box full of mystery dishes and there's bound to be some disasters in there... so it should come as no surprise that I already found one, on only the second week of the year. The thing that DID come as a surprise to me is that this disaster is an apple tart recipe. In the history of my baking life (admittedly not an illustrious history, but a history nonetheless) I have neither baked nor tasted an apple dessert I do not like.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an apple fanatic- I'd choose Anything With Frosting or Most Things with Chocolate over an apple dessert most days- but the great thing about apple desserts is how reliable they are. They're always tasty, they're always cosy and they make your house smell amazing when you bake them; you can reliably make one anytime of year without waiting for the fruit to be in season; they often work just as well for a luxurious breakfast as they do for a dinner-party worthy dessert; many taste as delicious warm from the oven as they do at room temperature; most people like them and I've never met anyone allergic to them to date.

All that said, I finally found an apple dessert that is just not worth it. I made this one recent frosty morning when outside was so cold that the ice on the ground still hadn't melted from days before and I just wanted something warming in my kitchen. This kuchen was supposed to do the trick but it lied to us, dear reader.

First of all, this cake requires that you make a dough (yes, a dough, not a batter) and then line a springform pan with it. This should have been hint #1 that things would quickly go south, but I thought I was experienced enough to handle a freeform tart so I went ahead with it. The dough is then pressed into the bottom of the springform and up the sides of it, but there wasn't nearly enough dough so it was almost impossible to get the dough more than ½-inch or so up the sides without making bald spots on the bottom of the pan. Once that's done, you fill the middle with a cooked-apple mixture you've already made, and which is so full of juice that the pan is basically just a bowl of liquid.

Then you bake it, praying the whole time that it doesn't leak hot caramelised apple liquid onto the bottom of your oven (for once, it didn't!) and when it's done, you try to saw through it with every serrated knife you own. The cake portion of this cooked up thin and crunchy, but, like, not in a good way. The texture was cardboard-y and flavourless, except for the filling. The really unfortunate part about this kuchen is that the filling is actually delicious... so delicious that we may or may not have scooped the apple-cherry filling out and stirred it into a bowl of porridge for breakfast on the morning after I made this ill-fated recipe... and again every day until we ran out of filling.

As always, despite the fact that it's a disaster, I'm including the full recipe. Don't make this cake, but if you're in the mood for the best porridge of your life, make this filling. It works on pancakes, in porridge, in yoghurt and also probably in ice cream, but I didn't get around to testing that for sure before I ran out of filling.

If you're on the hunt for a better apple recipe, check out the others (all better than this!) over here.

The verdict:

2 spoons out of five. I can't give it any less because of how good that filling was, man.

After making a Load of newspaper recipes from this box, it's a little embarrassing how fast i was able to identify the woman on the bottom right as Betty crocker.

One year ago: crazy crust apple pie
two years ago: Happy New Year!

the recipe:

Apple Kuchen

the directions:
filling:

Simmer apple slices and raisins or cherries in just enough water to cover them until apples are just tender but still retain their shape (about 10 minutes).
Meanwhile, combine sugar, cinnamon and orange zest.
Drain fruit, then stir sugar mixture into fruit.
This will immediately make a syrup, but that's ok.

dough:

Preheat oven to 210C/425F and grease an 8-inch springform pan.
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
Work in butter by mixing at low speed.
Beat in eggs, then stir in milk JUST until combined.
Spread dough on bottom and up sides of prepared springform pan.
Pour fruit mixture into pan along with any syrup that has formed.
Bake 45-50 minutes, until crust is deep golden and filling is firm-ish and bubbly.

the ingredients:
the filling:

5 c (600g) apples, peeled, cored & sliced thinly
½ c (75g) golden raisins or dried cherries
2/3 c (134g) sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp orange zest

he dough:

1 c (120g) flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
2 ½ tbsp (35g) butter
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp milk

Marshmallow Lime Chiffon Pie

If you live Stateside, then today is Pi Day (3/14). But over here in the UK, the date is written 14/3, so it's not really a holiday that anyone here celebrates.

Never to be foiled by being in a country that doesn't celebrate the same holidays as I want to (and never one to miss an opportunity for pie!) here's a double-whammy holiday recipe for you: it's a pie for Pi Day but it's also green for St. Patrick's Day later this week!* And it's also terrible.

Oh, sorry-- did that come as a surprise to you? Maybe you didn't read the title, which includes both marshmallow and lime. Or perhaps you ignored that photo up there. Or maybe you didn't scroll straight through to the ingredients like I always do to see that this recipe includes lime jello, egg yolks, and marshmallows, and also that it is a nearly-glowing shade of green.

Anyway, I tried to keep an open mind about this recipe, I really did. It's been at least a decade since I had Jello, and even longer since I've had lime Jello, so I was hoping maybe it wasn't as bad as I was thinking it would be. From the second I opened the packet of Jello powder, the entire kitchen smelled like Pine-Sol, and it was hard to stay optimistic after that. But still I persevered. I dissolved the Jello in water, set it aside, and then scrambled some egg yolks. The instructions say to heat the egg yolks slowly with sugar and lemon juice, but, not wanting to scramble the egg yolks by heating them too quickly, I turned the heat as low as it would go so I'd keep a nice smooth custard.

But I didn't count on what happened when I added the lemon juice: it curdled the egg yolks instantly. No matter how much I heated them (or didn't heat them), the egg yolks were curdled, lumpy, and not going to come back together. So I strained out the curdled bits and tried to proceed. But then trying to stir the custard mixture into the still-warm Jello also didn't work (the egg mix floated on top), and then adding whipped egg whites just made the entire thing frothy. Plus, I live in a country with no mini marshmallows, so I had to snip up full-sized ones, which didn't dissolve and took up way too much space in my pie tin. What I'm saying here is this: this is a terrible recipe and you shouldn't make it. Unless you really like lime Jello (or marshmallows), in which case you should just pour some Jello into a pie crust, let it set, and then top it with marshmallows, because this is just not worth it.

*Technically, Scots don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day either... but since the holiday has its origins in the British Isles, I'm counting it. Though I promise a better St. Patrick's Day recipe later this week, so stay tuned! 

The verdict:

0 spoons out of five. I reserve the zero spoons ratings for things that legitimately didn't work, and, based on the picture that accompanies this recipe, which shows a tall, fluffy, pale green concoction with the marshmallows sunken into a single layer at the bottom... well, in comparison, this didn't work.

one year ago: French pudding (another disaster!)

The recipe:

Marshmallow Lime Chiffon Pie

the directions:

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water and set aside.
Combine egg yolks, 1/3 c sugar, lemon juice, and salt.
Stir over very low heat until slightly thickened (this will take awhile).
Remove from heat and blend in gelatin, stirring well.
Chill until slightly thick, meanwhile, beat egg whites until they form soft peaks.
Beat remaining 1/3 c sugar into whites, then fold into gelatin mixture.
Add marshmallows and stir well, then pour into pre-baked pie crust.
Top with shredded coconut and chill until firm, then serve... or don't.

the ingredients:

3 oz lime gelatin (this is one standard-sized US box)
1 c boiling water
2 eggs, separated
2/3 c sugar, divided
¼ c lemon juice
¼ tsp salt
2 c mini marshmallows or regular marshmallows, snipped into small pieces
1 prepared pie crust
½ c shredded coconut

Walnut Butter Cookies

When I started this blog, I didn't like walnuts. I found them bitter and greasy, which is a terrible combination, and I didn't like the texture, which I deemed less crisp than pecans (an objectively superior nut). And maybe it's the fact that I grew up making visits to my great-great-aunt's house in Forsyth, Georgia, where she would give me a pecan-picker and send me out into the yard to gather as many of the tastiest papershell pecans I've ever tasted, but I always felt like walnuts were the nuts for people who couldn't get their hands on good pecans. Well, friends, I now live in Scotland, where pecans are just as expensive as walnuts and... honestly, only so-so. I've spent my entire adult life swapping pecans and walnuts in any recipe that calls for them, but then I started this blog, and something strange happened.

Sometime around September, when I made this Courgette Walnut Bread, I started to like them. And by the time I made this Orange-Infused Cream Cheese Nut Bread, my opinion was firmly pro-walnut. (This was an exciting development for me, as nearly all of Eleanor's dessert recipes include-- either mandatorily or as a suggestion-- some kind of nuts, most often walnuts.) So I was legitimately excited about these cookies: I mean, they have butter in their name. Plus, they include coffee (I mean, instant, but still).

So I figured these cookies would be incredible-- like a moister, grown-up version of a Pecan Sandy, with just a hint of coffee throughout. But... well, I was wrong.

Part of this may be my fault: the recipe calls for 'instant coffee,' which, to me, means instant coffee powder, because if it was it was meant to be instant coffee dissolved in water, wouldn't you just say 'coffee?' Also, the recipe says to 'sift flour, sugar, salt and coffee,' and since I obviously can't sift liquid coffee, I figured it was powder that would then dissolve when the butter in the cookies melted in the oven. It's possible I was wrong about this, because the instant coffee did nothing but burn. It's also possible that something else went drastically awry here, because there was only supposed to be 2 teaspoons of coffee in the recipe, and even if it was liquid coffee, that was still not enough to moisten the dough enough for it to stick together. (I know this because I tried, after the 'powdered coffee' route ended so badly, to re-do the recipe with liquid coffee. It was equally unsuccessful.)

The dough was too dry, so not only did I have to handle it much more than I should have to get it to stick together (which itself made the cookies tough), but also I couldn't 'flatten' the cookies with a sugar-dipped glass because they were so dry that as soon as I tried to, the balls of dough just kind of exploded all over my cookie sheet.

But I tried to bake these anyway, and then this happened on the first batch:

So I knew it was just not meant to be. I still had some cookies that didn't get dropped, so I tasted them and they were terrible. They somehow managed to be both too tough AND too crumbly, and the instant coffee didn't dissolve at all, so it gave the cookies a weird graininess and a burned flavour because, hello, you're not supposed to cook instant coffee unless there is enough other liquid in the recipe to dissolve it.

New! One year ago: Tuna Teriyaki

The verdict:

0 spoons out of five. These cookies sucked.

The recipe:

Walnut Butter Cookies

the directions:

Preheat oven to 150C/300F.
Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and coffee in a medium bowl.
Cut in butter with a pastry blender until it is the size of small peas.
Press dough together and shape into small balls.
Roll each ball in walnuts, place 2” apart on a baking sheet, and press flat with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.
Bake 15-20 minutes until edges are slightly brown.

Yields 3 dozen.

the ingredients:

1 ½ c flour
½ c sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 tsp instant coffee
1 c butter
¾ c walnuts, chopped