Lifetime Recipes Made Easy
Fall is in the air making it the perfect time to combine two of my favorites, butternut squash and pomegranates! My inspiration for this butternut squash salad recipe came from a magazine where they made a salad and used a tahini dressing…a tahini dressing…loved this idea and knew I had to make it.
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Here is a super easy cake involving apples and apple cider. I loved this cake as it was simple to make and making an apple cider reduction gives the cake plenty of apple flavor.
I love apple pie, apple crumble, French apple or anything apple when it comes to a dessert and yet I don’t tend to make desserts with apples. When I worked in the commercial kitchen we would experiment by making apple cakes (which was more of a batter then a crust), I just never liked the ones we would make.
For the fall, I decided I wanted to try my own version of an apple cake so I created this recipe, I did use a few other recipes as guidelines and took the best of what I read to develop this cake recipe.
The key is the reduction of the apple cider, to reduce apple cider, take a cup of cider and cook it on the stove until it becomes 1/4 cup, here is the before
and after
I used granny smith apples as they are great for baking
I shredded the peeled apples, the old fashion way using a grater, it was so much easier then pulling out the food processor
I wanted to wring out the extra moister so I placed the shredded apple in a towel and squeezed as much of the juice out that I could, do not omit this step
beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy, then add eggs, one at a time, make sure it is mixed well
In a separate bowl put “dry” ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, apple pie spice and salt) and to cream add apple cider leaving the “wet” ingredients
Just like I did in my blueberry cake, alternat adding adding 1/3 of dry ingredients, mixed until blended, add 1/2 of wet ingredients and mixed it up, add another 1/3 of dry ingreditents and mix, add all of the remaining wet ingredients, mix again and end with dry ingredients
Add the shredded apple and zest from 1 lemon and mixed it by hand until everything was incorporated. Don’t worry if your apple has some discoloration to it, it won’t matter once it’s baked up.
Put in an 8×8 pan, sprinkle with the cinnamon and sugar on top and baked it for about 50-55 minutes…YUM!
Now for the glaze, while the cake was baking I did the same thing with the apple cider by taking a cup and reducing it to only 2 tablespoons. I put the apple glaze in with confectioners sugar and used just slightly over 1 tablespoon of milk, if you like your glaze more runny add more milk and if you like a more thick glaze add less milk
here is a photo of the mixed glaze
Once the cake cooled off, slice your piece and drizzle some of the glaze on top (this can be optional as well)
I loved this recipe as you can see from my photo, you do not see large chunks of apple or any apple at all, just looks like a cake. The flavor of the apple is amazing, by reducing the apple cider, you intensify the flavor even more which helps bring out the apple flavor.
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Thank you again ~ Patty Limatola-Tanenbaum
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Ingredients
Directions
I know what you are thinking, “who puts pear with pasta and gorgonzola”…was I right? Well I never thought of putting pear with pasta until recently and let me tell you…I just loved it! I have to share how this pasta dish with pear and gorgonzola came about. I am currently teaching cooking classes at the Conejo Valley Adult School with my girlfriend Susan (you may recall her as I did her Thumbprint Cookies back in December) and together we are doing a “Fall Series” collection of recipes which included a class on “appetizers” and then last week we did “sides”.
For the sides class I was baffled as I had offered to do a “fall” pasta dish and I really wanted a recipe to knock it out of the park. I made so many different recipes including pasta, rice and quinoa and here is the thing, I had limitations as I wanted something that didn’t include squash (we already were using squash in other recipes) and I wanted a recipe that didn’t include using the oven…nothing was working for me so I knew I had to reach out to Tim. Tim was the chef who taught my culinary class, he is very creative and experienced and if you ever need a caterer, you have to try him as you will not be disappointed (click here if you’d like his information), he gave me the inspiration for this recipe. I have to say I was very grateful he did and so were the students in my class.
Because I wasn’t originally using this for my blog, my photos do not represent the recipe so use the photos as a guideline as I modified the recipe as I went along. The recipe below is the exact recipe though.
Put your water on to and cook your pasta according to the instructions on the box…in the meantime;
Put some oil in my pan and then put my nuts in the same pan and “browned” my nuts…once browned, I removed my nuts from the pan and left the oil in the pan (in my photo I used hazel nuts but for my recipe I liked the walnuts better, either nuts will work)
I then cooked my sliced shallots in that oil, I cooked the shallots until they were crispy, then I removed the shallots and placed them on the same plate as my nuts
in the same pan of the nuts and shallots, I put my pear in the pan and cooked them down
I put my cheeses in the same pan as the oil and added the shallots and pear to the sauce
I then added my milk
I stirred and let it cook together
I then added 1/2 of my chopped spinach
added my cooked pasta
I tossed my pasta with the sauce and added my now chopped nuts
I tossed it all together and served it warm
I have to say that I was amazingly surprised at how good this recipe was…and when I made it for the students of my class, they loved it too. I love that Chef Tim gave me the inspiration for pear with my pasta. Again, I did my dish with hazelnuts but walnuts work out great at well. If there is a recipe that you have tried that is different and unique and you are willing to share it with me, I’d love to experiment and blog about it.
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Thank you for visiting my site and I hope you enjoy this recipe.
I do love comments so please feel free to leave me your comment or suggestions. If you would like to be kept up to date with all my new recipes or reviews, please subscribe in the box listed on the top of the page “Subscribe Via Email”.
*** If you subscribe, you will be emailed by me with a link to confirm the subscription so be sure to click on that link.
Thank you again ~ Patty Limatola-Tanenbaum
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Ingredients
Directions
I know what you are thinking “everyone knows how to make beef stew” and you are probably right as there are so many different ways to make beef stew. I would also tell you that maybe not everyone really knows how to make a beef stew so I thought I’d post one of my recipes, lol.
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