Hello 2017, and Sticky Upside Down Apple Gingerbread Cake

It's January.

Which means I've been pinning all of the detoxifying salads and cleansing smoothies.  I've joined photography challenges and seven day juicing challenges, and even looked at fitness challenges.

I bought a new planner.

And I've been eating Ferrero Rochers and pizza, and crackers with Brie and fig jam, and Eggs Benedict and smoked salmon and burgers with fries.

I've had zero smoothies.  I made a salad with dinner one night, but reached for the fresh baguette and butter instead.  I've walked back and forth to my car.  My planner is still blank.  I did manage to go through a closet and put a few bags of clothes together to donate, so there's that.

The mind is willing.  It's so ready.

Yet today, the second day back to school, we're having another snow day.  I think that makes five so far, and winter has only just begun.  So I made myself coffee with Bailey's and egg nog, and contemplated taking down the Christmas tree.

And I looked at the apples in the fruit basket, almost past their prime, and thought about baking.  Not muffins this time.  Gingerbread.  I should have posted this recipe in December, because it's amazing, but gingerbread is something that goes well with winter, not just Christmas.  And there's always apples waiting to be baked into something good.

Sticky Upside Down Apple Gingerbread Cake

Ingredients:

Butter for greasing pan

4 tbsp butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

pinch of salt

4 apples, peeled, cored and cut into 8 wedges each

2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup molasses
1 cup buttermilk*

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325°F.  Grease a high sided 9" cake pan.

Melt butter in a small saucepan.  Add brown sugar and simmer over medium heat for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly.  Stir in salt, remove from heat, and pour into bottom of cake pan.
Overlap apple slices in a circular pattern on top of the caramel.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and spices.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs together with the brown sugar.  Add the molasses, then the melted butter and combine well.  Stir in buttermilk, then flour mixture.  Stir together and pour over apples in prepared cake pan.

Bake 45-50 minutes until centre of cake is set.  Mine cracked...that's OK :)  Let cool in pan on cooling rack for 15 minutes, then turn out onto plate large enough to catch any caramel spills or wayward apples.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or freshly whipped cream.  Tastes just as good once it has cooled.

*If you don't keep buttermilk on hand, make your own buttermilk with one tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar for each cup of milk. Put the tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar in your measuring cup, then add the milk to measure one cup of buttermilk. Allow to sit for a few minutes before combining with the other ingredients.

Happy New Year!

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Chocolate Upside Down Cake

We don't usually do dessert, unless it's a special occasion, or we have guests for dinner.

So Chocolate Upside Down Cake on Sunday was a big deal.  The kids decided we needed cake after dinner, and I couldn't come up with a good reason why not.

This cake is messy business.  The cake layer bakes on top of a molten, chocolatey, pudding-like sauce.

It's a quick and easy cake to put together.  Waiting on the one hour bake time was the hardest part.  I think I last made this cake about 10 years ago, from a recipe card written out long ago by my teenaged self.

As with many things I make for this crew, I could have easily made twice the amount.  This cake lasted about 3 minutes.

Chocolate Upside Down Cake

Bottom layer:

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 tbsp cocoa

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp butter

1 tsp vanilla

Mix dry ingredients.  Add wet ingredients and combine.  Press into lightly greased 8x8 pan.  I used a 9" round cake pan.

Top layer:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 tbsp cocoa

Sift together and sprinkle evenly over bottom layer.

Just before baking, pour 2 cups boiling water over cake.  Bake at 350°F for one hour.  

Lining the bottom of your oven with foil is a good idea.  Things might get messy in there.

Serve warm.  Vanilla ice cream would go well with this!

Need more chocolate?

 

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Coconut Banana Chia Chocolate Snack Cake

Earlier this week we celebrated a birthday, shamrock style.  We wrapped it all up with this wonderful coconut banana chocolate chip snack cake, as requested by the birthday girl.  It's an easy, no fuss snack cake, packed with flavour, 

Coconut Banana Chia Chocolate Snack Cake

3 ripe bananas, mashed

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

2 tbsp chia seeds

2 cups brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup coconut oil 

1/4 cup milk (dairy, almond, soy, rice...whatever!)

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate chips, semi-sweet would be good too)

3/4 cup shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line a 9 x 13 baking pan with parchment paper.

Cream together the mashed bananas, eggs, chia seeds, brown sugar, milk, vanilla, and coconut oil.  Make sure the coconut oil is well distributed, small lumps are OK.  Let the wet ingredients sit for 10 min to allow the chia seeds to absorb some of the moisture.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking powder.  Whisk dry ingredients into wet ingredients until combined.  

Stir in chocolate chips and coconut until evenly distributed.  Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 30-45 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.  Allow to cool in pan before slicing.

Oh, and a little something to honour the first day of Spring.  I'm so crafty.

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Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day isn't a very big deal in our house.  Most of the kids have outgrown the Valentine celebrations at school, so I'm not preparing treats to send to school, or sitting for hours watching them painstakingly write out Valentines for their classmates.  Truth be told, I sort of miss all that.  So I decided that there should be a little something pink to greet them in the kitchen when they woke up.

And hearts, lots of hearts.

The cake is the Sweet Soft Cherry Bread with Cherry Almond Glaze from Averie Cooks.  It turned out pretty good, although hers is much prettier than mine.  The almond and cherry flavour is fantastic.

The heart garlands came together easily.  Each heart is three folded hearts glued together, with string running through the centre of each heart to connect them.  I used these printable heart images.

All in all, pretty simple.  Some hearts, a pink cake.  They will always be my Valentines, after all.

Almond Cherry Loaf

Ingredients

One 10 oz. jar maraschino cherries

2 tbsp white all-purpose flour

1 3/4 cup white all-purpose flour

1 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup reserved cherry juice

1 tsp almond extract

1 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze

1/4 cup reserved cherry juice

1 tsp almond extract

Approximately 1 1/2 cups+ confectioners' sugar

Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray two 8x4-inch loaf pans with floured cooking spray or lightly grease and flour the pans; set aside. Recipe may be baked in one 9x5 pan, as 4 mini loaves, or as muffins. Adjust baking time accordingly.**

Remove cherries from jar and place on a cutting board.  Blot with paper towel to dry slightly, then roughly chop them.  Don’t discard the cherry juice, you’ll need it!

Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons flour (prevents them from sinking during baking) and toss to coat evenly.  Set aside.  

In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 3/4 cups flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Whisk together.

In a small mixing bowl, combine eggs, oil, all the cherry juice from the jar except 1/4 cup to be reserved for the glaze, almond and vanilla extracts.  Whisk together.

Pour wet mixture over dry ingredients and stir to combine.  Batter will be thick.  Do not over-mix.

Lightly fold in the chopped cherries.

Pour batter into the prepared pans, smoothing the tops lightly with a spatula.  Bake for about 40 minutes, or until bread is domed, set, springy to the touch, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no batter. Allow bread to cool in pans on top of a wire rack for about 15 minutes before removing and allowing to finish cooling completely on rack. While bread cools, make the glaze.

Glaze

In a medium bowl, combine 1/4 cup reserved cherry juice, almond extract, about 1 cup confectioners' sugar, and whisk to combine until smooth and satiny.  Continue to add sugar until desired consistency is reached. Glaze the bread just before serving.

**Click here for a pan size baking conversion chart.

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Easter Eggs and The Best Ever Carrot Cake

It's been a long time since I spent an entire day in the kitchen.  We hosted Easter this year, and spending an entire day in this kitchen was not exactly a hardship.  It was a great day of cooking with my Mom, my husband and my brother... without running out of counter space or bumping into each other.  I think I'd be happy to spend many days like that in  the kitchen.

Priority one was coffee.  Then the colouring of the eggs for Easter breakfast.

Next up, French Bread and Spinach Dip.  We'd need plenty of snacks to get us through our cooking marathon.

Crusty French Bread and the BEST Spinach Dip

This year's choice for Easter Dinner - Stuffed Pork Loins.  Recipes here and here.  I also give you two great video clips to illustrate exactly how to cut, stuff, roll, and tie up your pork loins.  This guy demonstrates it very well.

Of course, there were veggies, potatoes and gravy to prepare.  Plenty of snacks.  And wonderful family time.

My favourite part?  Dessert.  The star of the show for me was this Carrot Cake.  It was amazing.  Seriously, this was the best carrot cake I've ever made.  I slightly adapted this recipe by Trish at Mom on Time Out:

Best Carrot Cake Ever

3/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup vanilla Greek yogurt

2 cups sugar

3 eggs, whisked

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 cups grated carrots (mine were heaping, so likely closer to 2 1/2 cups)

1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

1 cup crushed pineapple in juice (not drained)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine vegetable oil, yogurt, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients, then add in carrots, coconut, and pineapple.

Pour into a greased bundt pan or a 9 x 13 pan.  Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/2 cup butter (softened)

1 8oz package cream cheese (softened)

1 tsp vanilla

1 lb powdered sugar

Beat the butter and cream cheese until fluffy.  Add in the vanilla and powdered sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.  Allow cake to cool before frosting.  And if you love cream cheese icing as much as I do, double the recipe.  Extra icing is a good thing.

To-Die-For Carrot cake at Mom on Time Out

   

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