Here's the Story, Morning Glory

For me, breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day; it's possibly my favorite meal of the day. Homemade yogurt and granola; an egg and cheese sandwich; even just a bowl of cereal with berries and milk--such simple things really make me happy in the morning.

And then the pediatrician suggested I cut milk and soy out of my diet, since it might be triggering an allergy that's turned the baby's skin into a dry, cracked mess. Five days in, her skin is looking better, and I'm getting used to black coffee. Breakfast, too, has taken a new direction.

The only reason I'm eating a bowl of soy-free cereal with rice milk and strawberries right now is that I've polished off all the Morning Glory Muffins I made last week. I wanted to find a recipe for a muffin or bread that didn't include dairy or soy, and that wasn't vegan, so I went to Cookstr, which I think has the best search options of any recipe site I've visited. I searched for a baked breakfast item that was lactose- and soy-free, and that didn't take more than an hour to make. Voila: Morning Glory Muffins, which were apparently the muffin of the back-to-the-land movement in the '70s.

Here's what I love about these muffins: they're made with shredded coconut, carrots, apple, crushed pineapple, raisins, and walnuts. As if that magnificent ingredient list isn't enough to lure you in, here's more to love: the recipe makes 16 regular-sized muffins (I got 12, since I made 6 jumbo and 6 regular). You can substitute whole-wheat flour for half of the regular flour (which I did). They don't get weighed down and gooey after a day, and make a very hearty breakfast.

I'm only on this diet for two weeks (for now), but I have a feeling I'll be making these muffins for many years to come.--S

It's Good to Be Home

I may have been sipping passion fruit and acai juices last week in Brazil, but I had fall on my mind. It was the middle of September and I couldn't wait to get home to go apple picking. I'd already made plans to drive up to an orchard near Warwick, NY, the day after I got back, and thankfully, when the day came, it was gorgeous.

My sister and I headed to Jessup Road Orchard and spent a beautiful morning picking half a bushel of apples. Though the woman working at the shop gave us a map explaining which varieties were ready for picking, we got a little lost once we were out in the orchard, so we aren't exactly sure what kind of apples we wound up with. Our m.o. went something like this: pull an apple off a tree, polish it on our shirt, take a bite. If it was crisp and sweet and maybe a little tart, too, we'd go to town and pick a dozen or more. If it didn't have quite as sharp a bite, we tossed it and moved on. It was a flawless system.

I've been eating about four apples a day since Sunday, and tonight I wanted to do something different. After a long day at work and an hour of tennis, I didn't have the energy for a pie. What I did have, though, was butter, buttermilk and kitchen staples like flour, sugar, brown sugar and cinnamon. And plenty of apples! Just the things for Apple Upside-Down Biscuit Cake.

This tarte tatin-like dessert is super-simple. You melt butter in a skillet, stir in brown sugar, and lay apple slices on top. Then you drop a basic biscuit dough on top, spreading it all over the apples, and bake it for 20 minutes or so. The only tricky part comes when the cake's out of the oven, since you have to invert it onto a plate. I advise waiting longer than the recipe's suggested three minutes, and I actually let Fork do the heavy lifting (and he did singe a few arm hairs in the process). But the end result is a delicious cake, light and rustic. This is the perfect weeknight dessert, or the ideal sweet for people who say they don't bake. And it's making me so glad to be back home.--S

Apple Upside-Down Biscuit Cake

For topping:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 lb Granny Smith apples [or other tart apples], peeled, cored, and cut into thin wedges

For cake:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk

Accompaniment: crème fraîche or sour cream (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Heat butter in an ovenproof 10-inch heavy skillet (preferably well-seasoned cast-iron) over moderate heat until foam subsides. Stir in brown sugar and remove from heat. Spread mixture evenly in skillet and arrange apples, overlapping, in 1 layer.
2. Blend flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt, and cinnamon in a food processor. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Transfer to a bowl and add buttermilk, stirring just until mixture is moistened.
3. Drop batter on top of apples and gently spread, leaving a 1-inch border around edge of skillet. (Cake needs room to expand.)
4. Bake cake in middle of oven until golden brown and firm to the touch, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool cake in skillet on a rack 3 minutes [I suggest 10 minutes], then invert onto a platter. Replace any apples that stick to skillet on cake. Serve warm.

Recipe courtesy of Gourmet

Adventures in Veganism

I'm pretty sure that the photo at left is not vegan-friendly. For one, the milk is from a cow. And secondly, the chocolate chips in that delicious little brownie bite are not vegan chocolate chips. But other than that, I think the vegans would be proud: I am experimenting with vegan baking. Not because I want to become a vegan (I just picked up some sausage for dinner), but because I recently visited BabyCakes NYC, a bakery on the Lower East Side where baker Erin McKenna makes vegan cupcakes, cookies, brownies, scones, muffins and other baked goods. And here's the thing: everything I tasted there was really good.

So I was curious about trying a few recipes from Erin's new book, BabyCakes. Unfortunately, this meant spending about $40 at the health food store on things like xanthan gum and arrowroot. I know: xan-what? Arrowhead? Seriously. This is all brand-new to me, and I'm not quite sold on it yet. But I'm up for the experiment.

The first thing I tried was the Apple-Cinnamon Toastie quickbread. Weird ingredients: garbanzo-fava bean flour, potato starch, arrowroot, xanthan gum, coconut oil ($12 a jar!) and evaporated cane juice (which I learned is a fancy way of saying natural cane sugar--so I guess it's not weird after all). Not weird: baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, applesauce, vanilla extract and roasted apples. The bread was terrific out of the oven: moist and not overly sweet. But the next morning it was a soggy mess. A tasty soggy mess, but still. Was it because I wrapped it with plastic wrap? Maybe it needed a little air. Or was it some sort of vegan thing?

At least I had most of the ingredients I needed for Brownies. The only thing I needed to buy were chocolate chips (of course, the recipe specifies vegan chocolate chips, but--guess what?--Gristede's doesn't sell them, and I wasn't up for another trip to the completely disorienting baking aisle of the health food store). So in went all the wacky vegan ingredients like garbanzo bean flour and arrowroot (which smells pretty great, actually), and... the brownies turned out great. I mean, delicious. Really! Rich, chocolate-y and the perfect thing with an ice cold glass of... milk. Like I said, I am not going vegan. But I'll eat their brownies!--S

Falling

Sunday may have been the most beautiful day we've had so far this fall. Gorgeous blue sky, warm sun, and where we were, in Orange County, New York, the leaves were just beginning to pop. As the sun set, the air felt cool and crisp. It was so lovely, and when we got back to the City on Monday and received a generous bag of Macoun apples from one of our neighbors, I knew I wanted to use them to make something that would keep that fall feeling going. An apple dessert would of course be a natural, but seeing as I've been eating more than my share of sweets lately and have a marathon coming up in two weeks, I wanted something a tad healthier. So I went with Cranberry Applesauce, the kind of sweet you can eat for breakfast without suffering a sugar crash around 11AM.

This recipe really is a snap, and the applesauce is nice and tart, with a hot pink color that looks almost as if strawberries or raspberries were involved. I used a quarter-cup of sugar instead of a half, and it came out fine, and instead of using a food mill to puree it (our apartment can only hold so many kitchen appliances), I employed my hand blender, which worked perfectly. I've been snacking on the applesauce by itself, but it would probably be marvelous with pork or turkey, too. Oh, and one more thing: it smells divine!--S


Cranberry Applesauce

Makes about 3 cups

4 apples (about 2 lbs), peeled, cored, and chopped
1 c fresh cranberries, picked over
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c apple juice or water
a 3-in. cinnamon stick
a 3-in. strip of lemon zest removed with a vegetable peeler
2 T unsalted butter

1. In a heavy saucepan cook the apples, the cranberries, the sugar, the apple juice or water, the cinnamon stick, and the zest over moderate heat, stirring, for 15 minutes, or until the apples are very soft.
2. Discard the cinnamon stick and teh zest, force the apple mixture through the medium disk of a food mill into a bowl, and stir in the butter. Serve the applesauce warm or chilled. The applesauce keeps, covered and chilled, for 1 week.

Recipe courtesy of Gourmet