Great Recipe Experiment #6

[baronessekat]

I found this recipe in a old box of recipes that had once belonged to my grandmother. While it is not dated, many of the others in the box are dated from the 1960's.

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups coarsely chopped apples [I used 1 granny smith and 2 pink lady]
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans) [I used pecans]

DIRECTIONS:

1. combine apples and sugar; let stand
2. beat eggs slightly; beat in oil and vanilla
3. mix and sift flour, salt, soda, cinnamon; stir into egg mixture alternately with apple mixture; stir in nuts
4. transfer into greased and floured 13x9x2 pan. Bake at 350ºF for about 1 hour
5. Frost with lemon butter frosting (below)

Frosting: cream 4 Tbsp butter add 3 cups confectioners sugar, beat in 2 Tbsp lemon juice, add enough water for spreading consistency. Pinch of salt as desired.



RATING: 4.75 I have not yet made the frosting but damn is the cake tastey. Nice and moist and dense and sweet.

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Found it - thank you! :-) Here's Mike's millionaire's shortbread recipe, just as he gave it to me (apart from the fact that I've made corrections to the more obvious typos). It is outstanding. It just about sent Charles into orbit. :-)

1. Shortbread. This can be as simple or complex as you like. My base recipe (8" square tin) is 150g butter, 75g caster sugar creamed together, and 175g plain flour and 25g semolina beaten into it to form a soft, quite sticky dough. Line your tin with baking parchment so it covers the base and sides and squish the dough into it with your fingers so that it forms an even layer, then poke the base with a fork a few times and bake at 160C for 25 minutes, ish, until it is golden brown in colour. But, tweak the recipe to suit your tastes; add lemon zest, or lavender, or cardamom to the butter & sugar. Swap some of the flour for cocoa. Add toasted hazelnuts to the mix, or finely chopped stem ginger.

2. Caramel. Once the shortbread has come out of the oven, make your caramel. Don't mess about with this too much - although experiments are good - as the ratios have to be fairly close to stop it recrystallising. I like my caramel to be chewy, but not so much that it'll pull fillings; it does have to have some structural integrity as the chocolate layer needs supporting, so it'll need to hit the soft-to-firm ball stage. In a small heavy-bottomed saucepan put 225g caster sugar, 25g butter and 140ml (a small pot, IIRC) of double cream. Over a low heat, gently stirring constantly, melt everything together, then once the sugar has dissolved turn the heat up and boil until it reaches 120C. If you don't have a sugar thermometer boil for five minutes, take a teaspoon of the caramel and drop into iced water, then try to form the caramel into a ball using your fingers; if it keeps it's shape when you take it out of the water it's done, otherwise put the caramel back on the heat for another two minutes (or longer, if the caramel didn't form into a ball underwater) and try again. If it's done, add a good pinch of salt and stir, then pour onto the shortbread; it should spread itself out evenly. To experiment with this layer, you could add similar flavourings to above, but I wouldn't bother. I would, however, tinker with the sugar; use 50/50 white caster and light soft brown, or dark soft brown, or even demarera. You can over or undercook the caramel to make it more or less chewy, but be careful of this. I'll do a post on caramels as sweets in a couple of weeks.

3. Chocolate. Melt some chocolate - about 100g will cover an 8" tin - with a knob of butter and pour it over the caramel. Do what you like here; add chili, more lemon zest, peppermint oil, or melt some contrasting coloured chocolate and swirl it using a cocktail stick, whatever you like. then leave to cool, and refrigerate until completely set. Then take the whole lot out of the tin on the baking parchment and chop into squares, bars, circles, whatever shapes and sizes you like depending on how much of a diabetic coma you like.

[baronessekat.livejournal.com]

thank you.

Last time I made this cake I made a peanut butter frosting of peanut butter and confectioner's sugar. Dicea LOVED the combination. I really liked it too.

Let me know if you make it and what you thought.