27 Hearths in the Plow Zone: Some Food for Thought

It's been quite a week for food here in good old Tüb, both baking and consuming! I kicked things off last Thursday while at my usual babysitting gig; inspired by some brownie-like cookies from a package that my charges' mother had given us the week before, I thought we could try making the real thing. Charge #1 (henceforth refered to as such, I think, since hey, he hasn't consented to having his name on the internet) insisted he didn't like chocolate, and he usually busies himself with video games, but somewhat-younger Charge #2 agreed to be my baker's assistant, and their mother was thrilled at the prospect. We walked down to the small shopping center across from the student village to get a few supplies, and I only managed to see two people I knew there--somewhat of a disappointment. When we returned, their mother was home briefly before what I understood to be some sort of PTO-type meeting, so she chatted with us in Denglish while we baked and she made dinner (one of my favorite aspects about babysitting is the family dinner I get once a week). She even lent some real American measuring cups to the process, which were most welcome. One of the problems I've run into while trying to bake here is converting all of the ingredients. You can do it with various helpful online tools and phone apps, but it's a pain, and things never seem to work out quite correctly. Between converted quantities, slightly different ingredients, and slightly different ovens, things usually work out, but never the way they would at home. Our brownies were no different. They sat in the oven for an hour and were nowhere near done. We eventually turned the oven up higher than the recipe called for and they finally began to firm up. Charge #2 and I spent some quality time with the Cosby Family auf Englisch while we obsessively checked the brownies, and they finally got firm enough to eat (though they definitely weren't up to my usual standards). The kids said they were sure it was a problem with ingredients or too few eggs or something (we had to adjust for some pretty tiny ones), but I still felt the need to defend my skills as a baker. The one truly excellent result was that Charge #1 declared them, "sooooooo lecker" (soooooo delicious). And he doesn't like chocolate. Sure.

(Alas I have no photos, but they look like pale brown brownies. go figure)

Here's the recipe for anyone who wants to try. (Credit goes to Anya for finding this a couple of years ago on allrecipes, I believe)

Granny's Brownies

Submitted by: Carl T. Erickson

"This has been a recipe in our family since before the turn of the century. I am 70, so you can imagine when it started to get down to mysister and me. Now my grand-nephew enjoys them. Keep under lock and key, orthey will disappear in a trice!"

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup butter

2 cups packed brown sugar

3 eggs

4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup chopped walnuts (Catie: I don't use these per old habit since my mom has a nut allergy)

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and eggs until light and fluffy. Stir in the unsweetened chocolate and vanilla until well blended. Mix in the flour, and then the walnuts. Spread batter evenly into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack before cutting into bars.

(3 level tablespoons of cocoa plus 1 tablespoon shortening equals 1 ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate.)

My second baking adventure of the week was an attempt to replicate my mom's apple cake with German ingredients. Sure it sounds easy, but like I said, there's always something a liiiittle off. I suppose this technically can't be called 'my mom's' since we appropriated it from an Amish cookbook, but my mom's always made it and I've never found it elsewhere, so I'm sticking with the moniker.

The recipe for relative German baking success here is pretty simple. First you go to Kaufland and guesstimate five cups worth of apples. Then you peel them with the world's dinkiest apple peeler that you dug out of the back of your kitchen drawer because you forgot your housemates don't actually have real kitchen utensils.

See dinky peeler. Then you have to actually guesstimate what 5 cups of apples looks like chopped.

Mix everything else (see recipe below) together sans mixer. Not hard, but slightly messier.

(Oh aren't I spoiled)

Add apples. Delish.

(Why yes, that is approximately 50% apples, you are correct)

After 45 minutes or so in the oven, you have moist, appley perfection. I never bake for the full time, I check things at 30 minutes or so after one very lucky cake-baking experience in which my whole masterpiece was saved when I checked it halfway into it's 'cooking time' and realized it was done. Obnoxious thoroughness pays, my friends.

(My blogger interface has decided it wants the rest of the post's text to be centered, even though I've undone the formatting. Please enjoy blogger's artistic license...)

This didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it to, but it was still pretty close to mom's cake, and definitely close enough to help with my serious longing for fall at home. Here's the recipe!

Amish Apple Cake

1 cup sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1.5 cups flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp. salt

5 cups raw diced apples

1/2 cup nuts, chopped (I do not add these but recipe calls for them)

topping: 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/4 cup sugar

1. Blend first 4 ingredients together in mixing bowl. Add the next 5 ingredients and stir well.

2. Fold in the apples and nuts.

3. Mix together cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle over batter.

4. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Notice the lack of butter, milk/cream, or obscene amount of sugar in these. Anya, Sinead, and I reasoned this made them, 'practically health food!' so whip up a batch for guilt free munching any time. In my family, they never last more than 24 hours or so because every time we walk into the kitchen, we cut off a tiny bite. I mean how can you resist! I expect this would be delicious with a streusel topping as well, so if anyone feels like an experiment, let me know how it goes!

And finally, I leave you with some other yummy photos.