Weekly Cooking (and related issues) Thread

[Jamestown1630]

Absolutely adorable - and blatantly reticulated!

I know it just takes a lot of practice, but it also takes talent, and I can’t imagine being talented enough to pull that cake out!

[Silentgypsy]

I can empathize with the zoo people who try to estimate delivery dates. When you think you know something, God looks down and says, "Oh, really?" and laughs.

This weekend, there were giraffe babies on the Saturday morning kids' programs. There's something so cute about babies--I get all drippy and gushy about them. Hopefully, April will have a relatively easy and uneventful delivery!

[Silentgypsy]

Wow! Talk about impressive!

[Silentgypsy]

Do you recall where you found the recipe for apple streusel cake? I pulled up tons of images from search engines and Pinterest and none of them looked like the image you posted. There was one that looked interesting but I got a 404 when I tried to pull it up. Was your cake as good as it looked?

[Aliska]

I'd saved that recipe for a couple years or more, and I wanted to check where I found it again and had a hard time.

http://www.musingsofagem.com/2013/10/apple-cake-with-streusel-topping.html

I made it a couple days ago. One Gala apple had been in the fridge too long, wasn't spoiled, but got a little mushy after peeling and sitting in cold water for awhile so they wouldn't brown.

The cake sank a little in the center, but maybe I didn't bake it quite long enough. It's hard to test with the streusel on top.

Now I was disappointed with the streusel; it wasn't clustered and slightly crunchy or slightly browned looking like hers. More butter might make it too heavy. But if I made it again I would add a couple more tablespoons of butter and cut it in cold with a pastry blender, leaving it a little chunky. Or something. Mine tastes ok but is too grainy.

I used buttermilk for the cake part. That worked out well.

If you decide to try it, maybe you can come up with something a little better. Use firm but not sour apples.

My daughter likes it. It's certainly fit to eat, just really disappointed in the streusel top.

[Aliska]

Also I thought maybe I would make it in my big tube pan if the center keeps sinking. It almost fills a 9-inch springform pan. Otherwise I like the look of it just the way it is.

[Silentgypsy]

Thank you very much!

I once made a crumb cake that was 2/3 streusel and 1/3 cake and it was very good. However, it was hard copy so I'll have to go through a steamer trunk full of material to find it. If I locate it, will post.

[Silentgypsy]

I’m kind of thinking maybe I should try your cake and apple part with a different streusel recipe because the way you prefer your topping sounds like what I like. Also, a list of cake pan volumes might come in handy—like maybe exchanging the springform pan for a 9x13 and just changing the baking time might resolve the sinking-in-the-middle issue?

[Jamestown1630]

My greatest experiences with baby animals have been with rescued birds. It’s an amazing experience to rear a little bird, and experience the absolute faith that this tiny helpless thing has in Giant You, once you gain its trust and it begins to imprint.

You have to feed them with your fingers, teach them to eat on their own, and drink water; and then you have to ‘fledge’ them, during which training they’ll always fly right back to you, their mom.

But I have to agree with you - baby elephants are especially wonderful.

Caution/Disclaimer: Except under certain licensed conditions, the only wild birds that we are allowed to take/rescue in the US are three introduced species: Starlings; House (English) Sparrows; and Pigeons (and baby pigeons are especially difficult!)

And don’t try this at home! unless you’re ready for a many-weeks-long commitment while it’s a baby, and up to 20 years of pet ownership, if you’ve got a pidge. My sparrows have lived up to eight years, my pigeons may die later than I do :-)

[Aliska]

Part of the problem could be I set my springform pan on a pizza pan, so the heat might not have gotten distributed as evenly.

If you use a 9X13 pan, I'd just use 1 layer of apple slices. That's about all you'd get with the 2 apples called for in the recipe. They don't come out tasting sour, guess it's from the sugar in the topping and cake underneath.

It might take me a couple more tries to get the streusel the way I want it. Kind of like a crumble, a little crispy, a little soft in parts. It's got quite a bit of flour and sugar.

I was thinking I could cut in about 3/4 cup cold butter with my pastry blender, then lightly toss with just a little cold water to make some of it stick together but not as much as for a pie. I used to make quick crumble crusts for my pies for years, and that worked great.

For my crumble on pies (only it didn't have any sugar in the pie dough so that has to be factored in), I'd make a big 9X13 pie, blend the crust like big peas but wait to sprinkle the water.

Finish the remaining mixture for the pie cutting in the butter like it should be for pies (only I was using Crisco), toss with cold water, press out the shell and put in filling, then sprinkle the still dry crumble which doesn't have water added yet, spritz well with cold water (not too much, use a spray bottle), and the sugar (I use the coarse white sugar - baker's) I sprinkle on the top will stick and top brown prettier. It came out just a little crunchy; golden browned, everybody loved it.

Maybe check out some youtube videos. If the streusel has nice texture but a little skimpy, just double it. Oatmeal and honey helped in some muffins I make, but I prefer to perfect the streusel without the oatmeal for the apple cake.

Good luck and write back if I made it too confusing.

Too much butter and water might make it too heavy, so consider that. I've got myself thoroughly confused.

Making pies the way I devised and used for years was because I hated rolling crusts and wasn't good at it and the patching. And having a pin sock and pastry cloth to wash that got greasy. The dough you press in the pan is more forgiving and you can start pressing it in the pan right away without chilling it. First I would build up the sides nice and neatly, level off on the top, then sprinkle the rest in the bottom and press it down, trying to keep it even and taking care to blend well with the sides you have built. Rubbing with a baggie worked great for that but they don't make baggies any more. I finally found some sandwich bags that don't zip and will work for me (I only zip when I have to) and use a lot of the small bags. I found some at Walgreens finally but how long they will have them, who knows?

The dough has a little more loose flour than should be if you are going to roll your crust. Of course there should be no loose flour on the bottom crust after the water is sprinkled in that. A little loose flour or tiny crumble left in the top won't matter.

Sorry I got carried away. I loved the old Crisco for my pies. Now I hate it and I've been learning to roll better. But I do not want to use part butter. They taste blah so now I am going to try butter Crisco and may go back to hand pressing pies in the pan because it's not so stressful and messy.

My pressing method took a few tries to perfect; I could probably do it blindfolded now. But the other stuff.

[Silentgypsy]

Ohmigoodness! You are so much more experienced than I ! I’ll play with the ingredients and tell you how it turns out. Also, I made a sour cream coffee cake from “Saveur” that was very tasty. Changed the baking pans so that we ate one, gave one to the neighbor, and put one in the freezer. Asked for input re: perhaps reducing the total amount of sugar. They told us not to change anything. I think I made notes about the baking times for 2 inch tall 8 inch bkg pans. Will look for notes and for the url for the cake.

[Aliska]

While I'm thinking about it, I just forgot what I wanted to say. Oh, if I MUST roll a pie crust, I found one that works for me.

It's Chef John's late mother, Pauline's, crust for her Key Lime pie if you want to search for it on youtube. I didn't like the filling, but finally have a crust for rolling that is much easier.

Pauline used all pastry flour. We don't have it here and don't want to pay for shipping. Since my glass pie pans are the scalloped deep dish ones, they take a little more dough.

So I picked up the recipe from the Crisco site for classic crust for deep dish pans, using one cup of cake flour plus 1-2/3 AP flour and 1 cup shortening (check the math if you decide to try this).

Now others have rolled right away, most chill, and Pauline patted it out into a larger disk on her floured surface, like maybe 10 or even maybe 12 inches across, easy enough to do that. She didn't pre-chill. And I think Pauline used Crisco. The white kind. I pinch and even up the edges so they don't get very cracked or jaggy and finish rolling with a floured pin.

If I can get some more leaf lard or farmer's rendered lard, not the white store stuff (although maybe it doesn't matter), I used to watch in awe my mother-in-law roll lard crusts.

My sister brought me a jar of lard so I tried it my mother-in-law's way. For 2 crust pie. 2 cups flour. 1 tsp salt or adjust if necessary. Exactly 2/3 cup lard. Blend the usual way with a pastry blender, sprinkle in the cold water and toss with fork. It will roll right away into a perfect circle. No jaggies or cracks.

The only problem is I put a custard filling in it and it was ick. But it would work for fruit pies because that's the only way my mother-in-law would make them. I insisted on my mother's Crisco recipe (which does not roll into a perfect circle). My mother had the patience of a saint when she made always 2 pies.

Early on, I got fed up, cussed a blue streak, slammed my nice rolling pin on the table and bent one end. I didn't make pies for a long time after that and came up with my hand pressing method described in a post above.

[Aliska]

Thanks I'd appreciate that. The URL. Sorry I got so long winded. I never was much into coffee cakes but my daughter likes them. I do have some gorgeous recipes saved for German apricot kuchen (sweetened patted crust in a spring form pan, layer of apricots (or whatever) then mixture of sour cream. I mean to try it some time. Also have one saved with cherry filling and sour cream yogurt topping (baked of course).

Yes, I'd appreciate hearing what you come up with. The whole reason I even tried that apple cake was that gorgeous-looking streusel, nice and thick and clumpy, golden brown in parts.

[Silentgypsy]

Wow! I’ve only hand-raised an abandoned FIV-positive kitten that lived to be 15 months old, and a maternally-rejected minidachshund (born in 2014; she’s still alive and with us now.) My hat is off to you!

[Jamestown1630]

No, my hat is off to you. Most birds are easy, if you have the basics down. The major thing is that you have to carry them around for weeks. Fortunately, I’ve had understanding bosses :-)

I’ve raised one kitten, which had no issues.

I’m glad that you still have your mini :-)

[Aliska]

Pinterest has lots of ideas.

http://www.crunchycreamysweet.com/2014/09/21/the-best-apple-crumb-cake/

There is a place to click for a printable recipe.

The streusel part:

for the topping:
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter melted and cooled
1 and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

to make the topping:
In a medium bowl, whisk together both sugars, cinnamon, salt and flour. Add melted butter and fluff with fork until mixtures creates crumbs. Set aside.

I usually get away with slightly warm melted butter but maybe should have cooled it completely. And this uses twice as much butter, a whole stick.

I oveermixed it. Says to fluff with fork (see above). I guess leave it lumpy/clumpy if you get that far. I might use a few drops of ice water. Dunno.

Maybe I will just make the streusel and see if it works. Eat it for a treat or set out for the birds or my possum visitor.

Now I'd better leave things be for awhile.

[Silentgypsy]

Ooooh, that looks good! Decisions, decisions...

There's a big bag of shelled pistachios sitting in the freezer waiting to be turned into cookies and ice cream. There are three bags of vital wheat gluten to be turned into seitan for stir fries (never had it before. Would also like to try turning it into "chikn nuggets.").

Thank you for taking the time to help me!

[Silentgypsy]

Funny, I didn’t think of asking my bosses if I could bring the kitten to work. I probably could have—oh, nevermind.

[Jamestown1630]

The real trick is taking it on the bus/subway without anyone hearing it :-)

[Silentgypsy]

One other thing--do you have any Dollar Trees near you? They have foldover-top baggies if that's what you use. I don't recall what the original baggies looked like. They have the foldovers in Wal Mart, too.

The sour cream coffee cake had a crunchy pecan topping rather than crumbs but it tasted so good that I didn't want to change it.

Arlene's Coffee Cake

Instead of a bundt pan, I used 3 8" round pans, added 1 tsp. of salt to the batter, topped each cake with the sugar-pecan mixture, and baked them for 65 minutes. Also noted to use parchment circles on bottoms of pans and cool for about 18 minutes before removing from pans. IIRC, these were dense cakes with lovely flavor.

Your pie crumble topping sounds really good!

About 40-50 years ago, my mother gave me her Peg Bracken's "I Hate to Cook" book. In it was her no-fail pie crust recipe. You can handle it as much as you want and it never gets tough. Of course, it isn't like a classic, flaky pie crust, but I care a lot more about the filling and topping than the crust anyway. You use half as much butter as flour and half as much cold water as butter. You can add salt or whatever, combine the ingredients in the usual way, add sufficient flour so that you can roll it out into a circle (sometimes I add granulated sugar so that it tastes a little more like a cookie--then you have to shield the edges so that they don't burn when you have to bake the filling), and it's easy to transfer to the pie plate if you roll it out on plastic film, put your hand under the film, put your pie pan on top of the film, and flip it, trim, crimp edges and it's done. No holes, no patching, not a lot of wasted flour all over the place. The ancient Crisco recipe made a great classic piecrust but I'd rather be fast and exspend more effort on the filling nd topping. Piecrust is kind of personal, though, so I understand if you're not interested.

Here's the URL if the link doesn't work: http://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/arlenes-coffee-cake