Tag Archives: apples

Irish Apple Cake with Custard

food and cooking, ,

apple cake 3Sue posted this recipe for Irish Apple Cake on her blog The View from Great Island, and I put one together tonight as I was making dinner and ducking out of the kitchen every few minutes to watch our San Francisco Giants win the first game of the National League playoffs – yay! It’s a wonder I didn’t burn something; as it was, it took me until bedtime to get the last pot, bowl and springform pan washed.

< (After you spreaapple cake 1d the cake batter in the bottom of the pan, you make a layer of the sliced apples.)

The only thing I changed was the custard sauce, for which I cut the sugar by a third, and it was very nice. The whole cake is rich and very appley without being overly sweet, so that the streusel topping, for example, can be enjoyed in all its buttery crunchiness and you don’t feel that you are eating a caapple cake 2ndy bar.

(A streusel topping covers the apples as the final layer.) >

I used some Gala apples because I find the recommended Granny Smith to have a one-note sour taste; but the Galas were kind of blah so I added the juice of a lemon to brighten them up. I wouldn’t cut back on the amount of apple – in fact, I’d like to experiment and add one more apple, but next time I will go out of my way to find more flavorful fruit. Other than the barest hint of cinnamon there is not a lot of intense flavor to the cake, so the taste of the fruit is important.

My springform pan was 10″ in diameter instead of the 9″ that was called for, but the cake turned out lovely. It was ready about the time the baseball game was over, and we were in a good mood then and felt celebratory. Mr. Glad liked the cake very well.

apple cake 5

Ántonia’s apple orchard

books, nature, other gardens, , , ,

Willa Cather’s novel My Ántonia holds a special place in the hearts of both Mr. Glad and me, perhaps in our conjugal heart ? by reason of our sharing the story together more than once, and reading it on our own as well. When I’ve read it aloud it’s not uncommon for me to start sobbing at places in the narrative where the pathos hits home.

I was surprised to read recently a review in which the reader did not enjoy Cather’s writing, saying it was dry and lacking emotion. Those qualities might be why I appreciate her skill at capturing the story and drawing us in. Cather gives us the perspective of Jim, and we experience with him as narrator the various levels on which he is in love with our heroine and all that she represents, and he makes us fall in love with her, too.

Our differing response from the reviewer above probably has something to do with what we bring to the story. Though we haven’t lived in Nebraska or known any Bohemians, perhaps we are like Jim (and Willa Cather) in our grieving for the past, for the lifestyle of the pioneers and their farm life, for the good hardworking people we have lost; as I understand it, that was a theme that reappears in many of her works, but she accomplishes it without what might be called “emotional” prose. Mr. Glad and I both have farming in our roots, and our love for nature and the outdoors (and for people) is only encouraged and expanded by reading books like this.

I thought to transcribe some passages from the book on my blog, representative snatches for my own enjoyment and yours, as a way to savor again some moments from my reading experience, and perhaps introduce people who haven’t yet made friends with these characters and their world.

In the novel, there is no question but that Jim must leave the country life and go away to school and to city life. The passage below is from the last part of the book when he returns many years later for a visit, and I appreciate the way it conveys something of Ántonia’s character and also the mood of this season of the year.

“At some distance behind the house were an ash grove and two orchards: a cherry orchard, with gooseberry and currant bushes between the rows, and an apple orchard, sheltered by a high hedge from the hot winds. The older children turned back when we reached the hedge, but Jan and Nina and Lucie crept through it by a hole known only to themselves and hid under the low-branching mulberry bushes.

“As we walked through the apple orchard, grown up in tall bluegrass, Ántonia kept stopping to tell me about one tree and another. ‘I love them as if they were people,’ she said, rubbing her hand over the bark. ‘There wasn’t a tree here when we first came. We planted every one, and used to carry water for them, too — after we’d been working in the fields all day. Anton, he was a city man, and he used to get discouraged. But I couldn’t feel so tired that I wouldn’t fret about these trees when there was a dry time. They were on my mind like children. Many a night after he was asleep I’ve got up and come out and carried water to the poor things. And now, you see, we have the good of them. My man worked in the orange groves in Florida, and he knows all about grafting. There ain’t one of our neighbors has an orchard that bears like ours.’

“…The afternoon sun poured down on us through the drying grape leaves. The orchard seemed full of sun, like a cup, and we could smell the ripe apples on the trees. The crabs hung on the branches as thick as beads on a string, purple-red, with a thin silvery glaze over them. Some hens and ducks had crept through the hedge and were pecking at the fallen apples.”

–Willa Cather

Fuyu and Spy Lessons

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Northern Spy

Early in November Mr. Glad and I made a visit to our favorite apple farm. (This previous post introduced the topic and those orchards.) We were having company for dinner that week, and for the occasion I baked a pie with some Northern Spy apples, but didn’t like it. The fruit was juicy enough, but seeming to lack some zip, so that my pie was actually overly sweet and blah.

When I heard the next morning that son Pathfinder was going to be in town long enough to have dessert with us, I immediately thought to make another pie with my favorite Pippins. It was a success in every way.

Pippin pie

We’d also included some Rome Beauty apples in the boxful we bought. I stewed chunks of all three of these varieties together and stashed them in the freezer. After Christmas I plan to eat them for dessert with a lemon custard sauce. As for the Spy apples still in the box, they make great eating out of hand.

Romes and Pippins

During Advent, ideally I would forgo projects like concocting the vegan desserts that fit with my church’s Nativity fast, because one of the blessings of fasting is the extra time that is freed up if you are eating more simply and not fussing over recipes.

But this year we are hosting weekly church history classes at our house, and after the study session people like to stay to chat and nibble. When I brought the persimmons home from the monastery it was with the thought that perhaps I could make something with them to serve on these occasions.

O.K., I admit that it was also because I wanted to have some of that beautiful and cute fruit in my house. If you slice them crosswise you see that they are beautiful inside as well. Very Christian, this fruit.

I used a recipe for Vegan Peanut Butter Apple Bars, from Tasty Kitchen, the area of Pioneer Woman’s blog that features reader-submitted recipes. I switched out the apples for persimmons, and because persimmons don’t have the tart component that apples do, I decreased the amount of sugar in every layer. The crust is like a peanut butter cookie, which appealed to me.

They were tasty alright, and everyone liked them, but it seemed to me a case of the whole not being equal to the sum of its parts. I liked all the layers better before they went together.

The original recipe also called for a good amount of cinnamon, which I replaced with some cardamom, and that perhaps wasn’t spicy enough to compensate for the blandness of the fruit. Maybe the Fuyu persimmons are best fresh, or dried into fruit leather. Or adored for their loveliness.

The wind blows warm.

food and cooking, my garden, nature, , ,

The wind has been blowing balmy air into and around the house these days, but I’ve enjoyed some cool walks in the early mornings. Somehow this year the autumn atmosphere is calling me outdoors and I’m actually hearing, feeling the pull. I want to soak up whatever it is in the air while I can, before I get all wimpy and chilly all the time and just want to sit by the fire.

On the subject of fires, this warm wind has fanned the flames of a wildfire in one of our favorite nearby parks — eek! Mr. Glad and I saw the smoke from our front yard where we were working on the lawn and flower bed. Thank God, it was put out fairly quickly and burned less than 200 acres, of vegetation only.

In preparation for the controlled indoor fires I’m anticipating, my husband and I had just finished moving a half cord of firewood from our driveway, to stack in the side yard. My own method of carrying wood involves loading several pieces on my left arm, which was bare on this warm day, and right off was getting a bit roughed up.

I dug around in the rag drawer and contrived an arm protector from a section of worn-out sock. I’m showing you two pictures so you will be sure to see how clever I am.

Two logs loaded on….


Mr. Glad showed me a concave piece of bark that fell off a knobby oak log, and we admired the design of its inner side, one bit of art work that must be representative of gazillions of other lovely bark designs that no one ever sees. Then I made it our computer desktop background.

I’ve had to interrupt my outdoor reveries to cook up some of the bounteous harvest. Old friends hosted a women’s potluck and that offered me the chance to try out a new cake on the other ladies.

When I defrosted the freezer last week I had found various flours that I want to use up, and Mr. C. dropped off a bag of Golden Delicious apples, so I tried this buckwheat apple cake. Everyone loved it, and took home what was left over, except for the slice I saved for Mr. Glad.

The recipe calls for so many apples (six), that they completely solve the problem of buckwheat being a dry sort of flour. It was not overly sweet, and would be a good sort of cake for people who like to eat cake often. I used limoncello instead of the maraschino liqueur. I don’t understand how the cake on the original blog came out so pale. It’s as though the cook used refined buckwheat flour, which I’ve never heard of.

For the potluck lunch I also made a big bowl of tabouli, my method long ago adapted from a Sunset Magazine recipe called Bulgur Salad. Next summer I’ll share it. I was able to use parsley, mint, and tomatoes from our garden. I forgot to take a picture until after I’d stirred in some tuna to make half of the batch into a main dish salad for Mr. Glad.

Back out in the garden again, I’ve been deeply digging to break up the clay for planting some ranunculus bulbs and pansies where a shrub used to be. Some of its big roots were still hanging around and for the first time in my life I used a chopping maul to get them out of there. That was satisfying work.

One of the jobs on my autumn to-do list was to take out the Cécile Brunner rose in the far corner of the yard. This picture shows it four years ago, before it became a burden that is more trouble than it is worth.

I never thought I would say that about such a lovely rose bush, but this one is so vigorous, and vigorously invading three neighbors’ yards, that it requires hours of pruning three times a year, from which I come away scratched and bleeding, and wishing I could have done something else with the time. The bush is in a place where we don’t even properly appreciate its enthusiastic blooming.

I forgot that it likes to bloom in October, until my glance landed in its corner yesterday. It won’t do to whack it down in its glory, so I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks before I tackle the job. I will sadly remove one more rosebush from my life, trying to live with the reality of my limitations. In the meantime, I cut some stems to make one last bouquet.