German Apple Pancakes

Again, thanks to Bountiful Baskets, I've had had more than enough apples around. This morning Hilary and I woke up to a foot of snow, and I wanted to make something special for breakfast. I found this recipe online. I choose it because I don't have an oven-proof skillet, which most German pancake recipes call for; what I do have is a cake tin. I halved the recipe because I only have one cake tin, and also because there would only be two of us eating anyway.

First: slice the apples and cover them in the lemon juice, brown sugar, and cinnamon mixture. I also added pinches of ground cloves and ground allspice to mine. Set this aside. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and put the cake tin in the oven to heat.

Now you want to mix up the batter, including the milk, eggs, flour, and salt.

Mix it until frothy (top will be covered in bubbles and will continue to bubble). It may be a minute or two. Set this aside while you get your pan ready.

In your preheated cake tin (the oven should now be preheated to 400), add 1/4 cup butter and place back in oven until it's completely melted.

(Melted butter. Yes, you really will need this much.)

Once the butter is melted, place the sliced, spiced apples in the pan. In halving the recipe, I should have used one apple, but I still used two apples. You can use however many apples you like.

Cover the apples with the batter that's been sitting aside. Place back in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. I baked mine for about 25.

It turned out beautifully! Remember that German pancakes are still moist and spongy in the middle when fully baked. If you insert a knife and it comes out clean, it's finished, even if it still looks undone.

I served mine with this caramel sauce, which I love. It tasted wonderful together. If you don't want something too sweet, simply sprinkle the pancake with powdered sugar and serve.

I like this recipe because it didn't have a lot of ingredients, or a lot of them. It was easy to whip up and would also be easy to make in bulk. The most expensive ingredient would probably be the apples, if you had to buy them in bulk, and that's saying something.

Loved it!

Banana Pear Chocolate Muffins and Mexican Wedding Cookies

Thanks to Bountiful Baskets, I've had several Asian pears around that I've had no idea what to do with. I'm not crazy about eating pears just as pears, so I wanted to find a recipe I could use them in. Thankfully, I found this recipe (I also had bananas from the load, which are easier to eat/deal with but there were a lot of them and they were going bad), and got to work.

In addition to bananas and pears, I added--yes--Dove dark chocolate. I'm all about being healthy and fresh, but let's not get too crazy. I used one and a half chocolate bars, or about 1/4 cup - 1/2 cup after chopping. When I prepared these ingredients, I was originally going to use two pears instead of the suggested one, but when I got one chopped up I realized how much it was.

First step: mix the banana, eggs, sugar, vanilla, olive oil. (I have to say here--I love that this recipe calls for olive oil. It's so unusual for a muffin recipe. The ingredients are listed as "olive oil" and "vanilla (if you have any)," like someone was more likely to put olive oil than vanilla in muffins. Made me laugh).

Adding the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt. DO NOT OVERMIX your muffin mix! They will come out like rocks. Mix only until the dry ingredients are just incorporated.

I roughly chopped my chocolate instead of using chocolate chips, because 1) the chocolate bars are what I had and 2) it give the muffins a more rustic look anyway.

Waiting to be mixed together. (I added the pears and chocolate just before the dry ingredients were fully incorporated, so as not to overmix.)

I can't tell you how impatient I was for these to be done baking. They were SO good, and a great mixture that's somewhat unusual.

Some things you should know about this recipe as written:
-The recipe claims it will only make 10-12 muffins, which worried me. However, my batch made 23 muffins, so the work is worth it. (It might help that my pears and chocolate were roughly chopped and took up more space.)
-These muffins didn't puff up nearly as much as other recipes I've made, so don't be afraid to fill the cups a little fuller.
-The recipe says to bake them for 20-30 minutes, which seemed like waaaay long to me. I baked mine for 15 and it was plenty of time. Plus, my oven cooks fast; know what you're working with and adjust as needed.
-Anything baked with bananas has a distinct flavor; I was afraid that one of the banana, pear, or chocolate flavor would overwhelm the others, but the balance was great (unless you want more of one thing, then I'd recommend upping the amount).


Also this week, I made Mexican Wedding Cookies from this recipe. They are my favorite under appreciated "Christmas" cookie. I won't write up the tutorial, since the process is so similar to the shortbread or tart shell tutorials you already know from the blog. They didn't have many ingredients, were quick to make, and are fun to powder and have around. Highly recommend them.

For Future Reference...

I think it's important to note that I believe halving desserts is deplorable.





Sinners.

Chocolate Ganache Tart

Something magical and surreal just happened in my kitchen. It's called "ganache". Ganache is a delicious mixture of dark chocolate chunks stirred into boiling heavy cream. AKA: "If this dessert was a man you'd have to pull me away before we went too far".

Because of my new found obsession with all things Martha (or M. Diddy as her cell mates knew her by) we used this recipe.

A few things I feel obligated to note:
1. I do not own a food processor. Thus, Megan smashed our almond slivers by hand with a spoon.
2. I do not own a food processor. So the butter was mixed into the flour mixture with my freshly washed hands.
3. I do not own a tart pan. Thus we used a disposable pie pan that will indeed be disposed of as I cut through it while slicing up the tart. (Also, I would recommend using a non disposable pie tin, as they are very flexible and hard to press the crust into).
4. We did not add any kind of citrus zest.
5. Screw the sieve. There was zero point to it and it added to our dish pile.
6. I'm impatient. There was a lot of fridge usage so that I could partake sooner.

I would also recommend drinking a large glass of milk while enjoying, as it is very rich indeed (as are people that own tart pans and food processors).

Here are some pictures (obviously I took them because they're not high enough quality to be Megan's):

Chocolate Caramel Fudge Cupcake

Nothing too unusual for some Saturday baking when I made a dozen Chocolate Fudge cupcakes with Pink Vanilla Frosting (I love that they have this; testament that little girls everywhere are turning five every day) (both store bought).

 (You can imagine what they look like, I'm sure, but here are some pictures because, well.. they're pretty.)

After the first dozen, though, I decided I wanted to use the caramel left over from the crepe post a few posts back and incorporate it somehow. Since there seems to be a bake-it-into-the-middle-of-the-cupcake theme on this blog--cookie dough, Nutella--I decided I'd do the same.

 When they had finished baking, I "frosted" them with what was left of the caramel (which went a long way, I was surprised), and also with dark chocolate shavings.

 When I bit into one I found that the caramel had sunk to the bottom of the cupcake. I'm not sure why this surprised me; it's pretty usual MO for a bake-it-in-the-middle-of-the-cupcake. Obviously, this doesn't make them the easiest things to eat, but the flavors were brilliant together.

 A lovely Saturday bake indeed.