I baked!

Hi Caitlin,
It's been forever since I've really baked, and this was so easy it almost seemed like cheating. This morning Matt and I woke up early and made this little tart together so that we can take it over to Matt and Malena's for dinner tonight. It's a fig jam tart from "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. Do you have this book? It's a good one.
We wanted to make something simple to go along with a cheese plate and some dessert wine. We recently joined the wine club for Bonny Doon Wines and we've been hoarding some dessert wine away for a special occasion. I think it might be a lot to eat after dinner, but we have a soft and a hard cheese, this tart, marcona almonds, and grapes! I don't know what Malena is going to make but this dessert is almost a meal in itself.
We dropped into their apartment for the first time last night and it is so different from the way you organized it. It's interesting how a place can be completely transformed! The have their dining table in the kitchen and their living room where your dining room is. They had the sliding doors closed, but I think that your old living room is the office because sometimes I can see Matt at his computer from the windows. Anyways, we're looking forward to getting to know them a little better at dinner tonight.
I hope that you and Scott are doing well. We are so excited for you guys!
If I remember I'll try to take some pictures of our Thanksgiving feast, we'll miss you this year.
Talk to you soon,
Ginny

Rose's Famous Exhausting Caramel Cake

Ginny,
My parents came to dinner last night and I decide to make this caramel cake from a recipe in Saveur. I'd never made caramel before, but it didn't sound too hard: just sugar and butter and evaporated milk, cooked on low heat for a really long time. I guess I didn't read the directions too carefully, though, because as it turned out I had to beat the caramel sauce with a wooden spoon for about forty minutes until it transformed from a thicky syrup to the consistency of cake icing. Needless to say, my arms were exhausted, but finally it did indeed get thick enough to spread over the cake and hardened overnight into a beautiful smooth glaze. The cake itself is basically a pound cake, so the whole thing is extraordinarily rich; I think the cake weighs about six pounds! Still, it was really good, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Caitlin

Apple Cake

Hi Ginny,
Over the weekend I made this recipe from yet another grandmother, my mother's mother. We have so many apples after a recent trip to an apple orchard, that I've been trying to figure out new things to do with them. This cake is really easy to make: it's just a simple batter that you spread on the bottom of a springform pan and then arrange sliced apples on top and bake it for an hour. It tastes great with a dollop of creme fraiche or even plain whole-milk yogurt. What have you been baking this fall?
Caitlin

Granny's Oatmeal Bread

Dear Ginny,
Yesterday it was finally cool enough to turn on the oven and bake my first loaves of bread for autumn. I used a recipe for oatmeal bread from my aunt's mother, who died about ten years ago. She was an amazing woman who used to take us on walks to "gnome caves" in the woods behind her home on an island off the coast of Maine, and she baked bread all the time even though she was allergic to wheat! I thought this one turned out pretty well, though it was a little too molasses-y for my taste. I think I prefer honey as a sweetener in bread dough. We had friends over for dinner, and I served it with a big pot of soup au pistou, made with vegetables from the farmer's market.

A Quick Fix

Dear Caitlin,
I have to admit that I've been feeling like a bad neighbor lately! After we decided to do this blog together I got pulled into a vortex of last-minute projects and plans, no doubt a result of my starting school this week. But now I've started school, and everything went off smoothly...and I'm still alive! I do have to thank that person that called in a bomb threat on Wednesday though, because I missed two classes as a result of it, and I'm sure that those teachers had a lot of homework planned for my weekend! Therefore, in lieu of homework I decided to bake a quick batch of cookies.

I chose a recipe from the trusty Martha Stewart website because I wanted to make a bar-style cookie and I didn't want to make a trip to the store for any special ingredients. The beauty of this particular recipe is that it calls for the butter to be melted, which is perfect when you want a quick cookie fix! You can find the recipe for them if you click here.

The recipe calls for walnuts, but I didn't have any walnuts. I substituted with Pecans and I toasted them, which the recipe doesn't call for. I think that as a general rule I prefer to toast nuts before I bake them. What do you think? It seems to bring out the flavor and cut that bitter aftertaste, but do you know if there would be a reason to not toast them?

Either way, the bars were chewy and delicious! A truly perfect quick fix when you're in need of a cookie.

Pie muffins

These are cross-sections of two pie muffins from the Fort Greene Farmers Market in Brooklyn. They have a pie-shell crust and fresh fruit fillings (today, cherry and blackberry), but they are baked into the shape of a muffin. They go well with a mug of creamy milk for breakfast. When the temperature dips below 92 degrees, maybe I will make some of my own!