Fresh Apple Cake

I was born and raised in the Midwest and try to live my life by showing appreciation for the simple things like: good food, health, love of family, and friends. And maybe it's those Midwestern values that draw me towards blue collar pastries.

For example, my father worked the steel mills of East Chicago until he retired. Our family was never one for fancy cakes and such. My favorite childhood memories involve cold winter mornings, hot cups of coffee, and splendid coffee cakes. I can still remember my mom telling me to add more milk to my coffee because it was too dark. I still enjoy coffee cake to this day, but the portions are smaller and occur less frequently.

I recently baked this lovely cake that is spiked with fresh apples, dark raisins, and walnuts. It's incredibly moist, hearty, and fills one's kitchen with a wonderful autumnal scent. It is a magnificent cake to start the morning off with, whether one drinks coffee or not.

Print recipe: Fresh Apple Cake
One Year Ago: No Bake Mini Cheesecakes

Apple Raisin Muffins

Have you ever wanted to bake something and didn’t have all the ingredients? Did you go ahead with substitutions and hoped it would come out? That’s where I found myself last night.

I wanted to have a muffin for breakfast, a raisin muffin, to be exact. I searched through all my cookbooks and I did find recipes. But the ingredients were another story. My next step was the internet, where I found a recipe that was simple, yet I was still missing some the ingredients. I crossed my fingers and hoped that all the substitutions would yield me an edible muffin.

What I got was a large humble muffin, whose taste surpasses any of those overpriced dry muffins available at coffee houses. Oh, is this muffin soft and so good. The recipe originally called for 12 muffins, but I wanted big breakfast muffins, so I used a Texas muffin pan. I still cannot believe how well the muffins turned out. I guess if a recipe is well written substitutions will still yield one a good result.

If find yourself wanting a muffin but lack all the appropriate ingredients feel free to change out the wheat flour, half & half, apple, raisins and whatever else you don’t have. I did and it worked out just fine. The original recipe can be found here in case your are interested.


Ingredients:

1 ½ cups of whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon of vanilla
½ cup of sugar
1 large tart apple, peeled & thinly sliced
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 cup of raisins
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
¼ teaspoon of salt
½ cup of melted butter
¼ cup of fat-free half and half
1 large egg

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400F degrees and line a Texas-size muffin pan with 6 muffin liners, set aside. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Set aside. In a 2-cup measuring cup whisk together the melted butter, half and half, vanilla and egg. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and combined until just moistened. Fold in the apples and then the raisins. Divide the batter among the liners and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.