Comunidad Health Foods

I may be well on my way to turning 21st birthdays everywhere into celebrations of alcoholic food. And by everywhere, I mean two birthdays in the very small sphere I call my life. First there were the margarita cupcakes, and now this: a moist, subtle cinnamon cake topped with some of the best rum-soaked baked apples ever.

As a side note, I have done it - I have baked a cake in a tiny kitchen, with naught but a measly hand mixer. I have left my family's beautiful kitchen aid behind, and I am here to tell you (what most of you probably already know): despite my doubts and little stomach butterflies about screwing up royally, it can be done.

This recipe is really a fusion of two recipes, tweaked to meld together more perfectly. I took a basic cinnamon cake (intended to be topped with caramel apples), doubled it, added a brown sugar middle between two layers, poured in some rum extract (why not?) and turned my attention to Famous Dave's (very large) Drunk Apples recipe. I don't know if you've heard of Famous Dave - I hadn't, really, but L had, and he very much approved of his intoxicated fruit. Luckily, Famous Dave is not miserly with his recipes, and he put them up on the World Wide Web for me to steal. I trimmed the recipe down (there was no yield, but it called for 24 apples, and I really can't imagine making that many Drunken Apples), and used it as the icing, so to speak, for the cinnamon cake.

Everyone devoured this cake. Granted, I cut them enormous slices, saying to them as I handed them a plate loaded down with dessert, "Here, have some cake!" in my best Jewish Grandmother practice voice. So, it isn't surprising that we went through as much of the cake as quickly as we did, but regardless, it got rave reviews. I have a few changes to make next time, but those mostly have to do with my shortcomings in the thinking ahead department, and my unfortunate lack of light-metal pans (for those of you who haven't discovered this through food classes or your own baking experiments, dark pans promote browning and a kind of crusty action going on around the edges - not always bad, but not always good, either; light pans, on the other hand, reflect the light and produce a softer baked good).

I'm giving you the recipe as I made it, because it worked the way it was, and I'm not about to send you off with a set of instructions that I haven't even tried. However, afterwards I'll talk about how I'm going to do things differently next time, because there's always room for change.

Drunken Apple Cake, courtesy of The Purple Foodie and Red Rocks Sunrise Publishing
Yield: 2 8-in. cakes, and lots of drunken apple topping
The Ingredients - The Cake
4 C flour
4 tsp. (or 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp) baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2 C sugar
2 sticks butter
4 eggs
1 cup yoghurt
1/2 tsp. rum extract
For the middle layer:
1/3 C brown sugar
1 Tbsp. cinnamon

The Ingredients - The Apples
6 granny smith apples,* peeled, cored, and sliced
3/4 - 1 C sugar
1 Tbsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
2 Tbsp. rum**

The Method - The Cake
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (or, if you have a crazy oven like mine, try to remember to set it lower because it will inevitably rise up to 400 during the baking process and brown your cake before the insides are done) and grease two cake pans somehow - I used butter and then, because I was paranoid of the cake sticking, added some olive oil for good measure. Worked like a charm.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs in one at a time, beating well after each addition (it says for about a minute per egg - I tried counting in my head and decided 1 minute was a very long time to beat an egg into butter and sugar).
4. Reduce the speed in order to alternate adding the flour and yogurt, starting and ending with the flour. Note that the batter is supposed to be very sticky. Once this is accomplished, divide the batter into the two pans, and use a spatula to smooth out the tops.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes, meanwhile preparing the middle layer by mixing the cinnamon and the brown sugar together. I was worried that adding the layer right away would burn it, but if you know more about baking and say it'd work just fine right off the bat, do this step before placing in the oven at all. After 25-30 min., remove one cake from the oven and sprinkle generously with the brown sugar mixture. Place back in the oven and bake 25-30 min. more, or until the crumbs are golden and a toothpick comes out clean in the center. Be warned that my batter puffed up extraordinarily during baking, which ought to be expected with over a tablespoon of baking powder AND baking soda. It did not deflate, really, so just be careful when filling the pans up.
6. Now, here the recipe tells you to remove the cakes from the oven and immediately brush with some melted butter and roll in a mixture of cinnamon sugar. Referring back to my being paranoid of ruining this cake, images of cracked and crumbling cakes raced through my mind, and I let it sit in the pans for a few minutes, then I took them out and let them sit on cooling racks for a long time. Then, I brushed them with butter and rolled them in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar...but it didn't really work. It definitely did not ruin the cake, but I imagine that a little crunchy-sweet coating around the edges would have been enjoyable.
7. To assemble the cake, stack the layer without the brown sugar topping on top of the one with the brown sugar. They won't really adhere to each other, but I didn't find this to be a huge problem. More on that later. Once the apples are done, if you're planning to eat the whole cake in one sitting, spoon the apples on top. If, however, you want to be able to preserve the cake, save the apples for individual topping during actual serving.

The Method - The Apples
1. Mix together the cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg. Add the apples, and stir well to coat.
2. Pour in the rum - which, in my case, turned out to be 1 normal tablespoon and one ridiculously overflowing tablespoon (the more the merrier, right?).
3. Place the apples in a pot over medium heat until they start to get juicy and begin to boil. Maintain the boil for around 20 minutes. I think I let mine get a little bit too cooked, but that's more of an aesthetic thing than taste. I don't think anyone noticed.
4. If serving immediately, either place alongside or on top of cake. If not serving right away, let cool to room temperature and then refrigerate until use. When ready, place over the stove on medium heat once again, using the age-old stick-your-finger-in-the-pot method of determining when it's hot enough to serve.

The cake is simple but delicious, not overly sweet but far from bland. I didn't really pick up on the rum extract that I added, but then again, I've never tasted the original. And besides, I was hungry when I ate the cake, and it tasted good. I'm sure I missed tons of little nuances that any decent food critic would be describing in intimate detail now. I apologize. The apples added another dimension of flavor - again, not too sweet; I think here, the rum flavor really was detectable and offered a really nice contrast to all of that sugar and fructose boiling up together.

In the end, I would keep this as a one layer cake, and make the brown sugar layer more of a swirled middle. There weren't enough apples to adequately drown the cake as I had hoped, but rather than adding in the cost of buying even more apples, I think cutting back the cake works. I will definitely try using a lighter cake pan next time, if possible, and attempt to roll the cake in the cinnamon-sugar coating right away. Other than that, I really don't have too many changes. I'll just warn you that sitting in my cake carrier throughout the weekend, it dried out relatively quickly. By Sunday, it was not nearly the same cake (I baked it Thursday night). So, if you make it, force yourself (and your guests, of course) to eat it all right away. It's too good to let it sit there - another reason why sticking to the original one layer may be wise.

I've realized that amidst all of these birthdays, there has been a serious lag in savory dishes on here. That being said, I'm not planning to tell you about any dinners I've made recently. Yet. You see, I still have a batch of peanut butter cookies sitting at the top of my "to blog" list, and I can't leave you without this recipe for much longer. You're already missing out. 1 cup of peanut butter + 2 sticks of butter?

Yes, I can feel my dietitian heart clogging as we speak.

Yes, these cookies are absolutely amazing.

I know, I know, you must be looking at this picture and thinking, "Jess, I'm sorry, but you've lost your mind. What do you mean S'mores? Where are the graham crackers? And why in the name of sacrilege is there a banana on that plate?!" These, my friends, are Israeli S'mores, also known affectionately by me as, The-Dessert-That-Allowed-Me-To-Eat-S'mores-Even-After-I-Gave-Up-Trans-Fats-And-Therefore-Can-No-Longer-Eat-Graham-Crackers.

It was a sad day in my life when I discovered that, although the Graham products have such a nutritious and well-intentioned history of whole grains, recent times have added the lovely ingredient called partially hydrogenated oil, trans fat's sneaky alter ego. You see, the FDA decided it was a good idea to let companies claim that their products have 0g trans fat, just so long as the actual amount is less than .5g. The problem with that is that we're not supposed to eat more than 2g of trans fat all day, and these companies can get their bad fat count down to .49g per serving (talk about incentive for portion distortion!) and still brag about how they have 0g of trans fat and therefore must be super-duper healthy. So, say you go and buy graham crackers, and the serving is 3 squares. And let's just say that their actual trans fat count is .49g. And let's just say that you don't eat 3 of them. Let's say you eat 6. Suddenly, you're at .98g, half of your day's allowance, and you still think you're at o!

Okay, enough of my soap box. It's good enough to know that I gave up non-naturally occurring trans fats (re: I still drink milk), which is a shame because my family just bought a fire pit for the mountain house we were just at for Father's Day weekend, and the only thing I think about when I hear the words "fire" and "pit" together is S'mores. Can you blame me? Needless to say, I was dejected and sitting there mulling over in my head how I could enjoy S'more-like treats without the graham cracker - that is, until my sister told me about these Israeli S'mores. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to tell you that these are a S'mores substitute, per se, unless you're crazy like me. Bananas are just not the same as Graham Crackers: in case you hadn't noticed, bananas do not tend to be thin and crunchy with a flavor reminiscent of cinnamon. Still, it was a way for me to have something chocolatey and marshmallowy with my family over the fire pit, so I set about making them.

My first attempt was a delectable, gooey, melty....disaster. I decided to freeze the bananas first. This meant that when they heated up over the flames, moisture came out and turned my chocolate squares into syrup and marshmallows into fluff. And it was very finger-licking-good messy to eat.

My second attempt, which I am sharing with you now, did not go much better. No, I didn't freeze the bananas this time. I did learn that lesson. But you see, you're supposed to slit the banana without halving it, and then somehow pry that sucker open and insert both marshmallows and chocolate into the center without cracking, bending, splitting, or otherwise massacring the banana. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to do this. Because of this, my second Israeli S'more was essentially just as finger-licking good messy as the first, but more delicious because of the whole banana-defrosting-and-melting-everything-in-its-path avoidance thing.

I definitely need to perfect my method more, so I will leave you with the instructions that I was told rather than my own tips for making these unforgettable. Maybe you will have better luck interpreting the instructions than I did. If you do, please help me! The flavor combination is really wonderful, and I would love to be able to figure out the perfect ratio and set up method to make it really work. In the meantime, even if you fail royally as I have, you're left with a creamy, filling banana stuffed with gooey marshmallow and melty, pure chocolate. And even if your fingers get all messy and the banana falls to pieces and you need a napkin or two or five in the end, it's worth it.
Israeli S'mores
Yield: 1
The Ingredients
1 very very very just barely ripe banana (my sister originally told me one very very very ripe banana, but I'm convinced that she's mistaken)
2 marshmallows, halved (or, you know, stuff them in to your heart's content - who am I to say what the correct number is?)
4ish squares of Hershey's chocolate (again, these amounts are totally meaningless - put however much chocolate you'd like into them. This is just what I did, and found that's how much I could fit easily.)

The Method (subject to change upon further investigation)
1. Slit the banana hot-dog style without totally cutting it in half. Think hot dog buns.
2. Arrange the marshmallow(s) and chocolate square(s) in between the banana bun you just created, so to speak.
3. Wrap in aluminum foil. This is about to get messy.
4. Heat in your heating machine of choice (just please, please not a microwave): oven, toaster oven, grill, fire pit, you know, anything to get it hot.
5. Unwrap (Careful: it's hot!) and enjoy! (Fork recommended, but not required).

So, I really have no idea how to make this perfectly. I am no Israeli S'more professional. However, I have thoroughly enjoyed both attempts at it, even if they don't photograph well or fully embody the livelihood of a true S'more. They're still darn good, and you should try them.

And that's all I have to say about that.