Soused Apple Cake for the Fish Fry
It’s a three-day weekend, but I have things I need to do, so I am up at my normal time to bake while the day is still – well, not cool, but not so hot as later in the day. I need to make a salad; I need to bake a cake. We are invited to a fish fry – one of our favorite invitations. The host and his wife fry up a “mess” of fish, really good fish, and the rest of us are allowed to bring sides.
This cake, Soused Apple Cake, is easy, except for remembering to slice the apples a day before and soak the slices overnight in brandy. I could be like those famous cooks who tell you, “use a very good (olive oil, brandy, etc),” but honestly, here it would be a waste of good brandy because the brandy is a supporting actor and will be competing with cinnamon and nutmeg, so just use something you would use for cooking, not drinking.
It is also a very sweet cake. I have tried over the many years I’ve been making it, to make it healthier. It just isn’t the same. Today, I followed the original “can’t stop eating this cake” recipe.
Soused Apple Cake
4 cups sliced apples
brandy
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup salad oil
2 eggs
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans
Peel, core, and finely slice apples; put into bowl and cover with brandy. Let sit overnight.
Combine sugar, salad oil and eggs. Set aside. Sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Add to oil mixture. Drain apples, mix in, adding chopped pecans. Mix well (it will be thick) and pour into a greased and floured 9”x13” baking dish. Cook at 330°F for 1 hour.
Let stand ten minutes while you prepare topping.
Pecan topping
1 stick butter
2 Tablespoons milk
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups chopped pecans
Combine butter, milk, and sugar in a saucepan; bring to a boil, then boil for one minute. Add pecans, mix well, and spoon over apple cake while it is still hot.
The original recipe invites you to serve with whipped cream, but I find it to be overkill.
Christmas Cookie Prep – Done!
There was a time when I worked AND I was a mother, and I was a wife (still am) and I had other roles, all of which seemed to require at least a plate of cookies at every occasion, and often some kind of hors d’oeuvres as well. There was only one answer – be prepared! Like a good girl scout, I developed a strategy – do one or two cookies every day for about a week, then store them in storage containers and dig them out when you need them. The good thing is, you can buy these containers and pull them out once a year for a month for many, many years.
One of my earliest memories of Christmas cookies are of my mother and her best friend from university getting together once a year and making rosettes. I made my first rosettes when I graduated from college, sitting over pan on a stove burner, turning it up and then down, trying to get it to hold the perfect temperature, which it never did. Sometime around the 80’s there was a great fad for Fry Babies and Fry Daddies, and the Fry Daddy is just the perfect size for making rosettes, holding the perfect temperature.
This year, I did a hands-on seminar for a family group who wanted to learn how to make these. I am not sure it was a huge success. Everyone succeeded, but one said “I have learned how to appreciate YOU making them in the years to come.” A couple parodied my teaching technique (I am not such a great teacher) and I just figured it means they no longer have to be polite to me; I really am family, that’s what sisters do.
So I made them this week for my friend who hosts a big party every year for the ballet performers. I think of them as ballerina cookies, light as air, mostly made of air – wrapped in fat and sugar:
Rosettes – DONE.
Meringues, too, have that light-as-air feeling, and I am hoping the weather will stay crisp enough that they will not get chewy:
Still light, and melt-in-your-mouth, are the Russian Teacakes, snowy in powdered sugar:
Last, but necessary for color, are the stalwart sugar cookies, time-consuming and fiddly, but so good and so colorful:
Cookie prep – DONE!
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