Apples!

A room-sized work at MOMA

I went to New York this summer, and in my non-bloggingness, forgot to talk about it. I was visiting a good friend from high school/college/travelling abroad and it was my first time in the city (well, since I was 10). I spent a lot of time wandering about the midtown area. MOMA was amazing, as was the natural history museum. We got rush tickets to Memphis (which won best musical last year), which was excellent, especially at BOGO student prices. I love musicals.

Food highlights included Caracas arepa bar, a gyro from "the best" Halal cart, a bagel from H&H with salmon spread, a chocolate chip cookie from Levain (yum!), red bean ice cream from a cute place in Chinatown, and a Kosher Indian dinner that we cooked. Cooking kosher is hard. But kind of fun. For one night.

This guy is a pro dog-walker. Really.

I've been eyeing this apple "cake" recipe for several months. It's really a pie baked in a cake pan. But kind of a tart because it's open on top. I love that it takes 10 apples. I brought it to a pasta dinner for my frisbee team and it was rapidly consumed. On that note, I played frisbee at practice this week for the first time in 3 months. Wooooooo! My physical therapist says that my hamstring is almost totally normal again. Too bad I missed the end of this season, but I'm going to be raring and ready for next year.

Rougemont Apple Pastry Cake
adapted from A Passion for Baking

• 2 cups flour
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup cold butter, in chunks
• 5 Tbsp ice water

• 10 large apples, cored and slices
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 Tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. For the pastry crust, mix flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in butter until grainy. Add ice water and mix gently until just combined. The dough should be dry and shaggy, but should hold together when squished. Place into a bag and refrigerate for at least an hour.
   
2. Preheat oven to 350F. Brush a springform pan with melted butter and place on a baking sheet. Roll the dough into a circle and fit into the bottom and sides of the 10-inch springform.
   
3. Toss apples with sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and lemon juice. Fill the crust with the apples (you can make them pretty if you like). Cover pan with aluminum foil and bake 60-75 minutes until apples are soft.
4. For vanilla sauce, mix melted butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs, flour and cinnamon. Pour over the hot cake. Make sure you get the sauce into all the nooks and crannies. Bake another 20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Refrigerate 6 hours or overnight before serving.

Pi Day is delicious

Happy belated Pi Day by the way. Surprisingly, most of my friends didn't know about pie day until we came along. Growing up a proud math nerd, I find this disconcerting. Then again, I am the girl who still knows the 70 digits of pie she memorized in middle-school homeroom.

We did make a pie, but didn't have a camera, so the pictures and less than ideal. The intent was blueberry pie, but we misread the random recipe online on Matt's droid and got 3 cups frozen bloops instead of 6. So it turned into a blueberry-apple pie. Bloople pie. Berry pies always seem to run, so I grated one of the apples with the skin on to increase the pectin.

Bloople Pie

• Your favorite double-pie crust recipe
• 3 apples of baking inclination
• 3 cups frozen blueberries
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
  
• 2 tsp orange zest
• 2 Tbsp orange juice
• 2 tsp cinammon

1. Make your pie crust dough first and divide into two balls. Let it sit in the fridge for at least 3 hours.
2. Grate one of the apples, skin on into a bowl. Peel and dice the other two.
   
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Let is sit in the bowl until your crust is ready
   
4. When your crust dough has been sitting in the fridge for a while, roll the bottom part out and put into the pie pan. Roll out the top crust too while you're at it.
5. Put the filling into the crust, and top with the top crust. Crimp the edges together to minimize the leakage of tasty filling juice. And to make it pretty.
6. Cover the crust edges with foil and bake at 375 for 40 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 20.
   
7. Cool completely before eating unless you want runny pie juice everywhere. Maybe you do.
   

Forgive the crappy mobile phone photos