People want homemade dessert late at night too

My friend Katie and I were having a great night drinking wine and watching Julie and Julia (if you haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure this movie is about me). Earlier in the evening I thought I'd make us a pie, but I got lazy. As the night went on, I really wanted pie, but I didn't want to wait a long time for it to cook or to chill the dough or all that rigamarole that comes with pie making. What's a girl to do? Make tiny pies of course.

Katie and I peeled and diced an apple and divided it into two small ovenproof dishes. We squeezed some lemon juice on the apple pieces and sprinkled some cinnamon on top. Then I melted a few tablespoons of butter in the microwave and mixed in a few tablespoons of flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Then I glopped the flour/butter/sugar/salt mixture over the apples.


It's not pretty but it's gonna taste good. I turned the oven on and it would only go to 550 degrees (that happens sometimes. Gah). We threw the tiny pies in the oven and baked them for about ten minutes.


Anytime you can make a homemade dessert that you can eat warm right out of the oven is a good time. These were super quick easy and went surprisingly well with the cheap dessert wine we were drinking. Impromptu baking is the best.

Isn't it spring yet???

Today I walked through the Farmer's Market in Union Square and saw thousands of apples. "It's March!!!!!" I thought to myself. "Apple season is over. OVER! I don't want any more freaking apples!" And then I remembered that I still had four apples in the bottom of my crisper, leftover from a trip that Zack's dad took to an orchard. "I have to use those apples," I berated myself. "But how?"

One trip to the grocery store later, I decided I was too lazy to make a pie crust and picked up some frozen puff pastry. "Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa) uses it," I rationalized. "It doesn't make me a bad person." And so, there are now seven apple turnovers in my kitchen (there were eight - but I ate one).


Apple Turnovers

3.5 apples (I had to throw half an apple away - too brown - 3 would have been plenty though)
1 lemon (zested and juiced)
3 tablespoons sugar, plus extra to sprinkle on top
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Pinch kosher salt
1 package (17.3 ounces, 2 sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Hope that your oven isn't retarded like mine is and won't randomly stop working for no reason.

Peel and chop your apples. Add the lemon zest and juice so that they don't turn brown. Add sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix it up.


Roll out each sheet of puff pastry into a 12x12 square. Cut each sheet into four squares. Put some filling down on half of each square.


Brush your egg wash on the edges of the squares (this is so they will stick together). Fold the squares into triangles.


Push down all the way around with a fork.


Brush the remaining egg wash over the top of each triangle. Sprinkle some sugar on top. Cut two little slits with a knife across the top of each turnover so that they don't explode while cooking.


Bake for 20 minutes or until they are nice and brown.


See how how flaky and delicious they are? Yum.


Make them for breakfast. Or a snack. Or dessert. Or whatever.

Argh

Today I made an Apple Wacky Cake. I got the idea from Meredith's blog. You've seen her blog, yes? Well you should if you haven't. It's neat.

Rather than do the exact same post that Meredith just did, I have decided to just link to her post and take a picture of my final product (which turned out well, in my humble opinion).


I used a cake pan instead of a skillet, like Meredith - I even greased the pan before hand. But the cake stuck to the pan anyways. Oh well. If something called "wacky" cake looked too pretty, that would not be right at all.

Sometimes you have to be selfish

Recipes are coming, my dear readers. Rosh Hashanah was a huge success. I've still recovering from the exhaustion of holidays plus rehearsals plus....I don't know, whatever else is going on.

Sometimes, you have to make things just for yourself. Little things that you can enjoy alone. The other day, while prepping my apple tart for Rosh Hashanah, I found myself with a scrap of extra dough and a bit of fruit leftover. Rather than let it go to waste, I threw the fruit in a little ramekin, mixed in a pinch of sugar, flour and a tiny bit of butter and threw the dough over the top. I sprinkled some sugar on it and put it in the oven for 40 minutes at 400 degrees.


Back to feeding the rest of you tomorrow, I promise.

I still love tarts

Zack really likes apple desserts. Plus, I had a whole bag of apples from my CSA. I've never been a huge fan of apple pie, so I decided to use my beautiful tart pan and make an apple tart.

I took my tart dough from yesterday, rolled it out and put it in my lovely tart pan. Then I peeled, cored and chopped my apples. All by hand! I'm so amazing.


Ok, really I used this apple slicer thing. But I sliced the slices into even smaller slices with my knife.


Then I chopped up the bits at the ends of the apples and the slices that were weirdly shaped or too small. I spread these over the tart crust.


Whenever you see apple tarts in pictures, they have their apple slices in cool concentric circles. So that's what I did.


Then I poured two Tbs of melted butter on top of the apples and sprinkled three Tbs of sugar on them. Then I put it in the oven for about 65 minutes at 400 degrees.


It looks good, right? Zack thought it needed cinnamon. I kind of agreed. But that's more a pie thing. We both still liked it though! And maybe I'll try making an apple pie if I get more apples next week...