Kohlrabi & Apple Slaw

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Kohlrabi, Apple & Red Onion Slaw

To be perfectly honest, kohlrabi is not a vegetable I have a lot of experience with.  Sure, I’ve been seeing it at the farmer’s market for as long as I can remember, but its pale green, alien-ish appearance has always scared me away.

At some point, I had it in a restaurant and determined that’s its appearance is the only “weird” thing about it and its flavor couldn’t be more pedestrian–it tastes exactly like green cabbage you’ve been eating all your life.  The advantage kohlrabi has over cabbage though is its intense crunch.  When eaten raw, it’s amazingly crisp and refreshing, especially when paired with julienned apples and a zippy vinaigrette as it is in this slaw.

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Apple Walnut Cake with Maple-Brown Butter Glaze

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Apple Walnut Cake with Brown Butter Maple Glaze_edited-2
If you recall, I spent last fall on the hunt for an apple cake recipe to call my own.  I tried a French apple cake and served it with caramel sauce; I made another that was packed with apples and loaded with an obscene amount of crumb topping.  And this September, as soon as the stone fruits and berries gave way to apples at the grocery store, I picked up right where I left off in my quest for apple cake perfection.  This year I was thinking walnuts and cinnamon, butter and maple.

My persistence is paying off–this cake’s a keeper.  It’s a lightly spiced tube cake, with a moist, tender crumb.  You hit an apple chunk in most bites, a walnut in every other.  All of that goodness is sealed in with a maple and brown butter glaze that is the literal and figurative icing on the cake.  It’s decadent but homey, easy yet impressive, and definitely a cake I’ll make over and over.

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StrawberryPlum Turns 2!

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Afternoon at the Kitchen TableJust like that, a year came and went and my little blog is celebrating another birthday.  2!  It’s been 2 years since I started arming myself with the camera upon entering the kitchen.  2 years of using my blog as a reason to spurge on figs at the grocery store.  2 years of sharing words, pictures, and recipes.

Let’s use this milestone as an excuse to take an afternoon coffee and cake break (like I need an excuse…) and spend a moment looking back on some of the best recipes and my favorite posts of the year.  Thank you for being here!

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Roasted Chicken with Lemon, Caper & Parsley Sauce

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Roasted Chicken with Lemon & Caper Sauce

Ever since we entered September, all I’ve wanted to do is lie in bed, wrapped up in a quilt with the breeze blowing through my open window, and read.  Well, that and gorge on comfort foods (ahem, see that time I baked and ate way, way too many chocolate cookies).

My latest addition to my fall comfort food repertoire was these roasted chicken thighs.  I baked the chicken with sliced red potatoes and made a 2-minute pan sauce with capers, lemon, parsley, and a few dots of butter.  It ended up being exactly what I was looking for–minimal effort with big comfort food results and just the sort of thing I’d happily eat any night of the week.

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Chewy Chocolate Cookies with Rum-Soaked Cherries

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Double Chocolate Rum Cherry Cookies

I have a complicated relationship with chocolate.  I spent the first 20 or so years of my life not liking it at all.  Marbled birthday cake?  I’ll just eat the white parts, thank you very much.  Oreo cookies?  Yup, I was the type to lick out the centers and try to pass off the slobbery wafers on unsuspecting siblings.  Chocolate ice cream?  Honestly, I’m still not into it.

But at some point, a little chocolate seed in my food brain started to sprout and now I find myself craving it from time to time.  You don’t see a lot of chocolaty recipes around here, because my cravings tend to require immediate action–no time for recipes or pictures.  When I need chocolate, there’s usually not time to wait around for butter to soften or ovens to preheat, it’s more of a how-can-I-get-half-a-bag-of-chocolate-chips-into-my-mouth-as-quickly-as-possible sort of situation.

Well, I found myself in a days-long chocolate mood last week.  My pantry was in rough shape–not a chocolate chip or baking bar in sight.  I cleaned out my freezer, hoping to find a forgotten brownie or slice of cake.  No luck.  I tried concocting a frothy/sludgy iced mocha with cocoa powder; didn’t work.  I needed intense chocolate, something I could hold onto, chewy, fudgy, and decadent.  I needed to do it right.  I needed a big batch of cookies.

These cookies are everything I could’ve asked for and most definitely worth a trip to the grocery store/waiting for the oven to preheat.  They are intensely chocolaty, fudgy in the center, chewy around the edges.  I snuck in a handful of rum-soaked cherries but I imagine chopped walnuts or candied ginger being equally delicious.

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