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.
When I’m driving home from work at the end of the night, I always find myself doing a mental inventory of my fridge. What little bits and pieces do I have on hand that can be thrown together? What can I come up with for dinner without buying any new ingredients?
My third year of college, I spent fall semester in Florence, Italy. Immediately, I fell in love with the place–the different-from-home hum of the streets, trips to the market, gelato strolls, counter side cappuccinos, and, of course, the figs.
Since good, ripe tomatoes have become available in these parts, I’ve more or less been living on various combinations of tomatoes and bread. There have been a lot of panzanella salads in my life recently, not to mention fattoush, BLTs, tomato and cheddar sandwiches, toasted bagels with cream cheese and tomatoes, tomato bruschetta…