Dorset apple cake

May I start by “saying” that you, my fellow food bloggers and readers, are fantastic? Thank you for all the poppy seed offers and also for the best wishes for my new home! You have put a huge smile on this exhausted girl’s face. :)

I still have things to unpack, but at least now the place looks like a home, and not a warehouse. :)

I haven’t baked in my new kitchen yet and the only cooking I did was a quick spaghetti for lunch yesterday – Joao and I couldn’t stand sandwiches anymore. Luckily, I have a couple of recipes to post while I organize my house.

This cake was a hit – I shared it with a number of people and everyone loved it. It was moist and tender. I was a bit worried when the center of the cake sank, but Joao saw the original recipe and said that it looked like the one on the photo had sunk, too. I decided not to be so hard on myself and believe my husband’s opinion – even though boiling water is the only thing he can do in the kitchen. :)

Dorset apple cake
from Delicious magazine

225g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
450g Granny Smith apples
finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
225g caster sugar, plus extra for dredging
3 large eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
25g ground almonds
1 ½ tablespoons light brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/355ºF. Grease a deep 25cm springform cake pan – I used one with removable bottom - and line the bottom with baking paper.

Peel, core and cut the apples into 1cm pieces, and toss with the lemon juice.
Using an electric hand whisk or stand in mixer, cream together the butter, caster sugar and lemon zest in a bowl until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, adding a little flour with each addition to keep the mixture smooth.
Sift the remaining flour and the baking powder into the bowl and fold in with the ground almonds. Drain the apple pieces well, then stir into the mixture.
Spoon into the prepared cake pan, lightly level the top and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Bake in the oven for 1 hour or until well-risen, brown and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. If the cake starts to look a little too brown, cover with a sheet of baking paper after about 45 minutes.
Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes. Remove the cake from the tin and place on a serving plate. Dredge heavily with the extra caster sugar. Cut the cake into generous wedges and serve warm with a spoonful of clotted cream, if you like – I served it with thick yogurt.

Serves 8

Grilled eggplant with tomatoes and cheese and a new home

A quick post this time - I’m moving today and lots of boxes surround me right now.

If you like veggies, please, make this dish. It couldn’t be simpler and the flavors are so good. Serve it with some crusty bread and you’ve got yourself a meal.

Grilled eggplant with tomatoes and cheese
inspired by a recipe from Family Food

2 eggplants, sliced
1/3 cup (80ml) olive oil*
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 lb 2 oz (510g) cherry tomatoes, halved
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 teaspoons capers, drained
½ cup mozzarella – the one I used seems to be similar to Monterey Jack cheese
¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated
small basil leaves, to garnish – it was raining heavily so I couldn’t go outside to pick them

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/392ºF.

Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Brush the eggplant slices with some of the oil. Grill the slices on both sides until they are soft and begin to brown, then lay them in a large, shallow baking dish. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat the rest of the oil in a small saucepan, add the cherry tomatoes and garlic, then fry briefly until the tomatoes just start to soften. Add the capers for a minute. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the tomatoes over the eggplant, and sprinkle the mozzarella and the parmesan on top.
Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese is melted and golden. Remove from the oven then sprinkle the basil leaves over the top. Serve at once.

* garlic is not my best friend when it comes to digestion, so I used garlic infused olive oil and omitted the garlic cloves.

Serves 4

Lemon poppy seed cookies... And no poppy seeds in Brazil

After posting this cake, I received several emails and comments from people here in Brazil asking me where I had bought poppy seeds, because they couldn’t find the seeds anywhere. I had no idea there was something going on – I had purchased the package a while before that.

I call the store I usually buy spices from and the employee told me that poppy seeds had been forbidden in Brazil for a while; now, they are no longer banished, but there are so many rules for importing them that the companies prefer not to. I am so mad! I don’t write about politics on my blogs because it’s not my goal and I respect my readers, but I thought that forbidding poppy seeds is too much – there are so many illegal and wrong things happening in Brazil that they should worry about what really matters.

I baked these super yummy cookies months ago and publish them now hoping this ridiculous situation ends soon and Brazilian cooks and bakers can use poppy seeds again.

Lemon poppy seed cookies
from here

¼ cup (60ml) lemon juice
1 cup (226g/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ¼ cups (250g) sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 teaspoons lemon zest
3 cups (420g) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon poppy seeds + extra for topping

Preheat oven to 175ºC/350ºF; line 2 large baking sheets with baking paper.

In a small saucepan, bring lemon juice to a simmer and let reduce by half. Once it has reduced add ½ cup of butter (113g) and let melt, remove from heat and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, sift flour, baking powder and salt, set aside. In another bowl whisk remaining ½ cup of butter (113g) and 1 cup of sugar (200g) together until smooth and creamy. Beat in egg and melted lemon-butter mixture, beat on medium-high with an electric mixer for 3 minutes, or until very light and pale in color. Mix in vanilla, poppy seeds and 3 teaspoons of lemon zest; once combined, add dry ingredients and mix on low until smooth, you may need to stir in the last 1/3 to 2/3 of a cup by hand. Blend until smooth.
In a plate, combine the remaining ¼ cup of sugar (50g) with 1 teaspoon of lemon zest – rub the sugar and zest between your fingertips to obtain a lemony sugar. Roll leveled ½ tablespoons of dough into small balls and place on a prepared cookie sheet, 5cm (2in) apart. Using a very slight moist glass, dip the bottom into sugar mixture and flatten cookies, follow by sprinkling a few poppy seeds and a pinch of the sugar+zest mix over the top of each cookie.

Bake for 11-12 minutes (mine needed 14) or until perfectly golden around the edges. Let cool for a few minutes before transferring the cookies to a wire rack.

Makes 70

Cinnamon French toast

I love breakfast food. In a perfect world, people should be able to eat pancakes, waffles, muffins and bread all through the day. :)

This was the first time I tried french toast, though. We do eat something really similar here in Brazil, called rabanada, but it’s usually prepared around Christmas time and it’s not a daily breakfast meal for us. It’s equally delicious: the bread is soaked in a mix of milk and sweetened condensed milk, fried and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

I had drained some yogurt and was looking for something good to use it with - Pea’s “refund” muffins crossed my mind, but the amount of yogurt was not enough. The answer was on this book.

I used plain sandwich bread (which was the only kind around the house that day) and it worked fine, even though they were not very thick. I just had to be careful when frying and flipping them over.

Cinnamon French toast
from Kitchen: The Best of the Best

4 thick slices white bread, crusts removed
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar – I used vanilla scented sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup (120ml) milk
butter, for frying
extra sugar, for sprinkling
175g plain yogurt, to serve
fresh seasonal fruit, to serve
100ml maple syrup, to serve – I used honey
toasted pecans, to serve

Cut each slice of bread in half to make rectangles. Beat the egg, sugar and cinnamon in a bowl, then add the milk and combine well. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a frying pan – I used non-stick - over medium heat. Dip the bread into the milk mixture, covering both sides. Sprinkle one side of each piece of bread with sugar and gently fry, sugar-side down, for 3 minutes, or until the undersides are golden. Sprinkle the tops with a little sugar and flip over. Cook until golden. Serve with yogurt, fresh fruit, maple syrup/honey and sprinkle of pecans.

Serves 4

Waiter, there's something in my... picnic! Olive, herb and parmesan sticks

I haven’t taken part in blog events lately – I never seem to keep the deadlines in mind – but picnics are something I hold very dear and they are the theme for this “Waiter, there’s something in my...”, hosted by Johanna, Jeanne and Andrew.

When I was little, my parents used to take me and my brother to parks on the weekends, and we had wonderful picnics there (I once wrote about it here). To this day I can remember the towel over the grass and all the yummy snacks prepared by Mom – she was a magnificent cook/baker.
After she was gone, my paternal grandmother - who looked after us for a couple of years - would let my brother and I have picnics on the living room; she would lay the towel on the carpet for us to eat, just like my mom did on the grass.

These delicious bread sticks are my contribution to the event. Just stay away from them as they come out of the oven – otherwise, there will be none left for the picnic.

Olive, herb and parmesan sticks
from Dough: Simple Contemporary Breads

Dough:
5g fresh yeast or ½ envelope (3.5g) active dry yeast – I used dry
250g white bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cup (180ml) water, room temperature

Filling:
¾ cup purple olives, such as Kalamata, with pits in
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence
cornmeal, for dusting – I didn’t have any at home, so I used flour instead

Start with the dough: using a mixer with the dough hook, put the flour in the mixer bowl and rub in the yeast (if using dry, just mix in). Switch the mixer onto the slowest speed, add the salt and then the water, and mix for 2 minutes, then turn up to the next slowest speed and mix for another 6-7 minutes until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Remove the dough from the bowl, transfer to a lightly floured counter and mold into a ball.
Place in a lightly floured large bowl, cover with plastic/cling film and let rise in a draft-free area for 1 hour.

Make the filling: pit the olives and cut each one roughly into three (I cut into more pieces). Mix the olives, cheese and herbs together in a bowl. Set aside.

Assembling: with the help of the rounded end of your scraper, turn the dough onto the counter, lightly dusted with cornmeal. Using your hand, flatten out a rectangle about ¾-inch (2cm) thick. Sprinkle the filling on top and press it into the dough with your fingertips. Fold one third of the dough into the center and press down with your fingertips. Then fold the opposite side over on top (as if you were folding a letter to put into an envelope). Press with the palms of your hands to work the olives into the dough. With the flat edge of your scraper, cut the dough widthwise into 10-12 strips about ½-inch (1cm) wide. Flour the counter with cornmeal. Twist each strip (I pressed the sides together so the filling wouldn’t fall off) and roll them a little on the counter so they stretch to the length of your baking try (nonstick or covered with foil so the cheese in the dough won’t stick to the tray) and place the strips on top, leaving a gap between them – 1 inch (2.5cm) is fine.
Cover with a lintfree dishtowel and let rise for 30-45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 220ºC/428ºF; put the baking dish into the oven and mist the inside with a water spray. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Use a spatula to lift them from the baking tray. Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 10-12 – I got 16