Apple Cake

What happens when you have too many apples in your fridge? I found myself pondering this very question today when I looked into the fridge and discovered that our delicious golden delicious apples were starting to rot. Automatically I thought of baking an apple pie; however, I realized that my family of four who eat oh-so-healthy could never finish a whole apple pie. Last time I tried making one just for my family, we ended up freezing portions of it, and then throwing out the freezed portions when no one would eat them.

So instead of putting the pressure on my family to eat, I decided to shift the pressure onto friends and ended up baking an apple cake for my mum’s colleagues. Lucky for me, they love my food and I knew that my mum owed them a cake for I hadn’t baked for them in awhile.

While this cake is far from healthy, it does contain fruit and oil, rather than butter. My mum tells me to not compromise on taste when it comes to feeding people other than my family. Although I sometimes feel guilty giving unhealthy food to friends, their praise always manages to alleviate my guilt significantly.

I hate giving people food not knowing whether it tastes good or not. I put some of the cake batter into a ramekin to make a tiny version of the apple cake for my family to sample for dessert. It was very moist and “yummy” (Jasy, my sister) and now I feel secure handling the cake over to my mum tomorrow morning.

Ingredients
2 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (more if you are a big fan of cinnamon)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
4 cups apples - peeled, cored and diced

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 9x13 inch or round cake pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat oil and eggs with an electric mixer until creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat well.
3. Combine the flour, baking soda, and ground cinnamon together in a separate bowl. Slowly add this mixture to the egg mixture and mix until combined. The batter will be very thick. Fold in the apples by hand using a wooden spoon. Spread batter into the prepared pan.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 50 minutes or until cake tests done. Let cake cool on a wire rack. Once the cake is cool decorate with a dusting of confectioners' sugar.

Corn on the Cob

Summer time means cooking lunch for me and my 7 year old sister every day. This may seem like a burden for many, but for me, it's a joy! Today we went to our neighboring supermarket Genuardi's and got 4 ears of bi-colored corn. They looked so fresh, so juicy and so delicious. I managed to get all 4 ears of corn for only 66 cents. What a bargain!

The easiest way to cook whole corn is definitely boiling. Just drop them in a pot of boiling water and cook for 8-10 minutes. My instinct was right; they were indeed extremely juicy and very satisfying!

Summer Bruschetta

Last year, I took a class at school called Advanced Foods and Restaurant Management. While the title of the class sounds daunting, it was a very chill class and had absolutely nothing to do with management (or advanced for that matter). Basically we just cooked and ate and ate and cooked. It was a very enjoyable class. While we were studying Italian food, we made some bruschetta. It was the first time I had had bruschetta and I was absolutely delighted by the taste and texture I experienced when I bit into the bread.

While most bruschetta recipes prompt you to use a lot of oil, my healthified recipe does not feature oil as an ingredient. It is completely unnecessary to use oil in bruschetta. However, if you feel the need for some fat, just add a teaspoon or two of olive oil in with the tomato mixture. Bruschetta is great served for Sunday brunch or as an appetizer.

Ingredients

6 ripe tomatoes, chopped into cubes
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp vinegar (balsamic is best)
¼ cup fresh basil, chopped (2 tsp dried basil can be opted, but the intensity of the flavor is sacrificed dramatically)
Salt
Pepper
1 baguette
1 cup shredded low fat mozzarella cheese

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F.
2. In a bowl, combine the tomatoes, garlic, vinegar, basil, salt, and pepper. Mix well.
3. Cut the baguette diagonally into ½ inches slices. Put the baguette slices onto an oven tray and toast in the oven for about 5 minutes.
4. Take the tray out of the oven and spoon the tomato mixture on top of the baguette slices. Sprinkle cheese on top of the tomatoes. Put the tray back into the oven for about 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Soft Pillowy Marshmallows

I've always wanted to make marshmallows. Although I've never really been a fan of marshmallows, their outside attractiveness is worth the effort. Much of my cooking is for the fun of making something, not for the pleasure of indulging in the final product, and making marshmallows was no exception.

I searched the internet for a recipe but found that most recipes required corn syrup. I had none in my pantry and did not want to buy some as I realized that it would serve no other purpose for me in the future. In the end, I found a recipe from Allrecipes.com that required only one tablespoon of corn syrup as opposed to a whole cup and substituted honey in for the corn syrup. The end result was delightfully soft and puffy. I’m interested in what the result would have been if I had followed the recipe exactly. I also mixed some red food coloring with a little of the marshmallow mixture and poured it on top of the rest of the marshmallow mixture in the tin. I then ran a knife through the mixture to create a marbled effect.

Although marshmallows are certainly not a health food, they are in fact fat free. If you’re on a low fat diet, these are fine for you. However, diabetics should stay far far away!!!

These marshmallows were supposed to be for my English class on the last day of school, but I ended up bringing them to a sleepover where we made s’mores out of them. They were my first s’mores ever and they were DELICIOUS! Although I couldn’t put chocolate in them (My new year’s resolution: no chocolate for a year), they still tasted pretty authentic to me. Maybe at the end of this year, I’ll need to whip up some more marshmallows and indulge in some true s’mores.

Ingredients
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar for dusting
2 cups white sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup (I used honey)
1 1/4 cups water, divided
4 tablespoons unflavored gelatin (that’s 4 packets of Knox Gelatine)
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Food coloring (optional)

Directions
1. Dust a 9x9 inch square dish generously with confectioners' sugar.
2. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, stir together white sugar, corn syrup and 3/4 cup water. Heat to 250 to 265 degrees F (121 to 129 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms a rigid ball.
3. While the syrup is heating, place remaining water in a metal bowl and sprinkle gelatin over the surface. Place bowl over simmering water until gelatin has dissolved completely. 4. Keep in a warm place until syrup has come to temperature. Remove syrup from heat and whisk gelatin mixture into hot syrup. Set aside.
5. In a separate bowl, whip egg whites to soft peaks. Continue to beat, pouring syrup mixture into egg whites in a thin stream, until the egg whites are very stiff. Stir in vanilla. Spread evenly into prepared pan and add food coloring if using.
6. Let rest 8 hours or overnight before cutting.

S-U-M-M-E-R

With summer vacation in full flight I finally have time to spend in the kitchen! This summer, I will start this new food blog. I've been meaning to start one since forever but have never had the time. Here are just a few concoctions that I have prepared in the last few weeks. If you want the recipe for any of them, just request it!

Hiiii!!! I'm starting this new food blog and I'm so excited!!