Apple Cake

One of my favorite pass time aside from watching the telly is surfing the net. Does that still count as being a couch potato? I hope not. One fine day, I stumbled upon Smitten Kitchen and ever since then I always check what she's up to next. Most often than not, her recipes are easy, interesting and what I'm looking for at that exact moment. Like this recipe of an Apple Cake from her mom. My dad loves apple pie. The problem is I can't seem to get the hang of making a pie crust. My pie often comes out tough and I find it hard to roll our pie dough evenly, to be honest any sort of dough that needs to be roll out, I can't seem to do it. One side always ends up a bit thinner than the other side, they always come out lop sided, which can be a bit frustrating at time. I've been eyeing on these Joseph Joseph Adjustable Rolling Pin, they are not cheap I might add however to get that frustration out I think it's worth it and it works. I've read a lot of nice reviews online, I've decided to get one. Unfortunately, it's out of stock, I've only seen it once and I only saw one piece! I should have bought it then but I was afraid to impulse buy specially on baking materials without checking reviews online because most of the time they are expensive. Now I'm determined to hunt this down ^_^

SK's Mom's apple cake recipe is easy to do, the only labor intensive in this part is the peeling, coring and slicing. I don't make enough apple pie to warrant a gadget like this. Gorgeous isn't it? After that stage, it's all good. What I like about this recipe is all the baked apples! Yum!

SMITTEN KITCHEN'S MOM'S APPLE CAKE

• 6 apples
• 1 Tbsp. cinnamon
• 5 Tbsp. sugar

• 2 3/4 cup flour, sifted
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. dalt
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan. Peel, core and chop apples into chunks. Toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.
2. Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl to ensude all ingredients are incorporated.
3. Pour half of the batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apples over it. Pour remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top. Bake for  1 1/2 hours, or until a tester comes out clean.

Look What I Got!

I'm a huge fan of Cooks Illustrated for 2 years now, I got my first copy of this magazine in my favorite second hand store. The first time I saw this I was like what kind of magazine is this it's so thin probably not get a lot of infos here. When I opened it and began reading I was so amaze how much one tiny magazine gave me. From that day on, whenever I go to the second hand bookshop I see to it that I check for new back issues. What I love about this is they explain the process of how they ended up with that particular recipe and what are other methods they thought off before getting that perfect recipe. I'm a baking gal therefore, I, myself don't cook a lot maybe once every few months but with Cooks Illustrated makes cooking look far more entertaining. 

Last week, I found something special in my email. Cooks Illustrated announces their new iPhone apps. I got so excited I quickly downloaded it and told my sister to do so as well. It's so like the magazine with amazing recipes in them. I'm so over the moon for it. I'm such a huge sucker for CI's publicity, I just might actually buy a membership after viewing some of the member's only recipe. It's inspiring and makes me want to go home and putter around in the kitchen!

Click here to download. I promise you, you wouldn't regret it.