Orange Spice Cake

Mmmmm, cake! Not normally a cake baker, this has become a welcome addition to my repertoire. Aromatic spices? Check. Local oranges? Check. Makes the house smell autumnal? Check. Gotta love this one!

Spice Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon grated orange peel
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup whole milk

Directons:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter three 9-inch-diameter cake pans. Line bottom of pans with waxed paper. Butter and flour pans; tap out excess flour.

2. Sift first 8 ingredients into medium bowl.

3, Using electric mixer, beat sugar, butter and orange peel in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time.

4. Stir flour mixture into butter mixture alternately with sour cream and milk. Divide batter among prepared pans.

5. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Transfer pans to racks and cool 10 minutes. Turn cakes out onto racks and cool completely. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)

Frosting

Ingredients:

• 2 8-ounce packages chilled cream cheese
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons grated orange peel
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup chilled sour cream

Directions:

Using electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter in large bowl until well blended. Beat in sugar, then orange peel and vanilla. Beat in sour cream. Cover and refrigerate until frosting is firm enough to spread, about 30 minutes.

To Assemble:

Place 1 cake layer on platter. Spread 2/3 cup frosting over. Top with second cake layer. Spread 2/3 cup frosting over. Top with third cake layer. Cover top and sides of cake with remaining frosting.

Notes:

* Do get a fresh orange and use a microplane grater for the peel. The scent is just amazing!

* If you are not familiar with cardamom, you may want to cut it in half for the first go round with this recipe. It is a strong flavor, but oh, so savory!

* In my oven, I can’t get all 3 pans to sit evenly on the same rack. Knowing that opening and closing the oven to swap around pans brings its own problems, I usually just do 2 pans. Of course that leads to some extra frosting, which I just load up between the two layers.

* Made this once with low fat cream cheese. Not a good idea at all as it just didn’t hold up well. Go for the gusto with this one and don’t look back!

Baked Apples

Working with this new book, I thought I’d start off easy before sliding into new territory. Baked apples. I know, why would you even need a recipe for baked apples? But hey, I for one had never before baked these beauties. What changed my mind? Seeing these beauties at Smith Family Farm, shining in their own glory, with naught a drop of wax to deter my sight from their natural beauty. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Oh, and the sugar, and of course the brandy.

Here we go:

• Heat oven to 375 degrees.
• Core apples and hollow out with a melon baller or mini scoop.
• Fill with brown sugar.
• Douse with brandy.
• Replace core.
• Bake for 50 to 60 minutes.

And tah, dah … with such a simple recipe we should all see perfection.  Uh, but on my first try, all I got was 33%.

Cherry Crisp

Cherries were the catch of the day yesterday at the Farmer’s Daughter farm stand. Arriving home, I hit my favorite recipe web sites, honing in on something easy and quick for my precious cherries. Pie crusts have never been an area of strength for me, so the focus of the search quickly moved to crisps and cobblers. Two recipes had promise, one at Epicurious.com and another at allrecipes.com. Looking more closely at the ingredient lists, I went with the Fresh Cherry Crisp at allrecipes.com simply because the shopping list would be shorter. This was to be a “let’s have a nice, simple dessert” kind of dish, not a “let me show you how I can take a simple ingredient and 5 hours of time to make something magnificent” kind of dish.

The recipe being decided and the few extra ingredients purchased, I took a good look at those beautiful cherries and suddenly realized, duh, they have pits! Do I have a cherry pitter? No, which explains why I don’t cook with cherries. Fortunately, my friends D & J have a nice assortment of gadgets they are willing to share. I specifically knew they had a cherry pitter because just last weekend they bought a full case of cherries, pitted them, and froze ‘em for a rainy day. (Industrious friends, they are.)

Cherry pitter in hand, I got to work. D, my grown son, was over and found it quite interesting, and ended up pitting most of the cherries. From there, this recipe was easy as pie.

Fresh Cherry Crisp

INGREDIENTS

* 4 cups pitted sour cherries
* 1 1/2 cups white sugar
* 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
*
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 cup old-fashioned oats
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 1/2 cup butter
* 1/2 cup shortening

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl 9 by 13 pan, combine cherries, 1 1/2 cups white sugar, and 4 tablespoons flour. Pour into 9×13 inch baking dish. In a medium bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups flour, oats, and brown sugar. Cut in butter and shortening until crumbly. Sprinkle over cherries.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until topping is golden brown.

The result? Beautiful! I enjoyed a sample lakeside after a dinner of BBQ ribs and corn. First bite was divine, second was crunchy, and then … yuck! I got a gob of that awful shortening in my mouth. Egads, what a terrible mouth feel! That being said, by simply swapping out the dreaded shortening for some more butter (Paula Deen would approve) I think this is a winner. Easy, tastey, and really shows off those beautiful cherries.