chasing the light...and a little sugar

Let's set the scene. It is 4:30pm and night has fallen, already. The air is cold and your cheeks are red and ready for some time indoors, as is the rest of you, which has been chasing the light all day. You are tired. It is time to go home. Rest awaits you, and so does an apple-streusel cake that you baked earlier that morning while you were waiting for the grey and the fog to lift. It was easy to make and heck the apartment still smells like cinnamon when you walk in. Job well done; afternoon snack and cozy-seasonal-scented apartment all in one. Pat yourself on the back, put some tunes on, press the button on the espresso machine, cut a slice of cake, put your feet up, and relish the little perks of a cold fall night.

Check out the kitty in this photo....I caught him jumping for swallows that were flirting about in the leafy vines. Admittedly I'm jealous of his house, if this is indeed his house, all leafy and colorful.

I know I just recently posted another apple cake recipe, but I didn't really have an option when it came to baking this cake. I had to do it. Ali and Jess both made this cake within a week of one another, both raving about it's hearty, moist, deliciousness while cooing over their new babies. How can I resist new babies and apple-cake? I can't. Hence today's featured cake. And since I don't have a newborn to coo over I added a little extra sugar in the form of a pecan streusel filling.

Teddie's apple cake, adapted from the NYTimes

* cooks note - I followed Ali's lead and left the walnuts and raisins out, but then of course pretty much replaced them with the streusel filling. Just do what feels right. It will be good

- butter for greasing the pan

- 3 cups flour, plus more for dusting pan

- 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

- 2 cups sugar

- 3 eggs

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1 teaspoon cinnamon

- 1 teaspoon baking soda

- 1 teaspoon vanilla (I used about 1/4 tsp vanilla seeds, which are cheeper and easier to come by here in Zurich)

- 3 cups peeled and cored and thickly sliced tart apples

streusel filling (you might have extra, that's okay)

- 3/4 cup pecans, chopped

- 3 tablespoons brown sugar

- 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350ºF/180ºC. Butter and flour a 9" tube pan.

Beat the oil and sugar with a mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment) while assembling the remaining ingredients. Add the eggs and beat until creamy, about 5 minutes

Sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Stir into the batter. Add the vanilla and apples.

Make your streusel by combining the chopped pecans, brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

You are going to place the streusel filling in the middle of the cake so spoon about half of the dough into the tube pan. With a knife create a little well for your streusel filling. Sprinkle as much of the filling as will fit, making sure it doesn't touch the sides (it will burn). Cover with the remaining dough and smooth out with a spatula

Bake for an 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan before turning out. Serve at room temperature for breakfast or dessert.

I love this last photo. The trees were given a haircut, just enough so that the leaves hover over your head. And while you are wandering under the leaves you can have some water. I don't think I've mentioned them before, but there are a whole network of water fountains in the city which are completely safe to drink out of. I like to think of it as my own little Evian spring, right from the Alps.

home again + apple cake

*panic* (I like to think of the asterisks as hands flailing in the air). The leaves are gone. All of them. From yellow to bare in one weekend. When we left on Thursday the apartment was bathed in a nice yellow light and now it just feels bright and exposed. Ugh. I guess this means our neighbors can officially see into our windows, although I think they've always been able to since they always have their curtains drawn, which I figure to mean they can see us and they don't want us to see them. But if they have their curtains drawn it means we don't need to use ours right?!

I think it's almost better that we were away when the last leaf fell. We weren't here staring at the tree, willing it to hold on just a liiiiittle bit longer. Nope, we were home enjoying the company of friends and family. So remember when I said that this was the first time Zach and I have traveled back together? Well it's funny because the flight is the most time we spent together all weekend it feels like. We had our own agendas and people we wanted to visit with. We did come together briefly throughout the weekend, but never for an entire day. I guess that's what happens when you live abroad and your time at home is precious. I see a lot of Zach, more than I ever saw of him when were living in New Haven, and I obviously love spending so much time with him, but when we whisk home for a weekend it's impossible to compromise on our wish-list, so we each go our separate ways. Until we have kids I kinda think that is how it will go...

These are a few pictures of my weekend with the girls in New Haven. I didn't take many, because once again I completely forgot, too wrapped up in living it I guess. It was heaven. Air mattresses squeezed together on the floor, mornings around the table with coffee, toast and eggs, afternoons strolling through East Rock and evenings eating anything that was edible. Friday night Crem cooked a chicken surrounded by Brussels sprouts, potatoes and squash and then tempted us with whole wheat chocolate chip cookies for dessert.....mmm. Saturday we went to Caseus, my favorite restaurant in New Haven and shared a bunch of delicious plates, including more Brussels sprouts. It was perfect. I can't wait for the next reunion/bachelorette/wedding.

It's always hard to come back from a weekend like that. Zach and I were both a little bummed when we boarded the flight. It's just so nice to be home sometimes, especially when all your friends make the effort to see you. We often get caught up thinking that is what it would be like if we lived in the states again - that we would be showered with dinners and drinks and get togethers. It's easy to forget that people are busy, like really busy, and it's often hard for friends who live in the same city to see each other, let alone see each other everyday.

Pair a touch of sadness with a pinch of jetlag and a whole lot of fallen leaves. It was time for a pick me up and I'd been wanting to bake an apple cake for a while, ever since the leaves changed from green to yellow. I found this recipe in Dorie Greenspan's cookbook Around My French Table, which I've been browsing/using a lot recently. It's quick and pretty easy, made with ingredients you likely have in your pantry. The dough to apple ratio is also wonderful in this cake. It's as if the dough is just there to take up the extra room between apples and the nooks they create amongst themselves.

apple cake

adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table

8 tablespoons / 1 stick / 113 g butter, melted and cooled

1 vanilla bean or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

3 tablespoons dark rum

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt

4 large apples, different varieties (I used 5 because 2 were really little)

1 tablespoon of cinnamon, more if desired

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Butter an 8" - 9" springform pan.

Peel the apples and slice them into fairly thin slices, about 1/8" - 1/4" thick (you can really cut them however the heck you want). Place them in a bowl, sprinkle with cinnamon and mix well.

Place the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the vanilla bean, sliced lengthwise (if you are using extract you will add it later). Once melted remove from heat and allow to cool and then remove the bean, scrapping out as much vanilla 'dust' as you can

Whisk the eggs until foamy. Add the sugar and whisk until incorporated. Follow with the rum and vanilla extract if using.

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add half of this mixture to the batter, whisking gently until incorporated and follow with half of the melted butter. Mix gently so that you have a smooth batter rather than a thick batter. Repeat with the rest of the flour and then the rest of the butter. Switch to a rubber spatula and fold in the apple slices, making sure to coat them evenly with batter. Pour into the buttered pan and place in the oven for roughly 50-60 minutes, less if you are using a 9" pan. You want the top to be golden brown and a cake tester to come out clean when tested.

Those were the leaves. Don't you think you'd miss them to0? They quickly became a part of our apartment decor. Now I might just have to paint some big canvases yellow and hang them everywhere.
And this is just a favorite fall photo that I snapped on one of my walks, walks which are already getting colder, cold enough for scarves and soon mittens.

warm apples in caramel

This is not your typical celebratory dessert. It's not a cake, there are no candles, it's not complicated, but rather it's simple and seasonal and warm, just what we needed for our little celebration of sorts. The marking of time is always interesting with time feeling like it moved quickly or slowly and all based on an event in the past and the tracking of the little moments in between that event and the day that bears some significance - the year mark, the decade, the it's-too-long-ago to count backwards mark. Within the past week Zach and I stumbled upon two of these markers - he has lived in Switzerland for one year and we have been married for 6 months. These aren't must-toast type of occasions, but we recognized them none the less, reflecting back on last October when Zach started his new job and was eager to fill me in on every little detail of our new city and apartment. And then there is the 6 month anniversary. Zach commented that although we've been married for 6 months we've probably spent at least two of those months apart. With my visa issues and traveling back and forth it's probably true. But I'm here now, and thinking towards the year mark in April seems like a long way away. What will change? Will Zurich feel more like home? Will I have a steady routine or a job? It's too much to think about, better I just think about today, one day at a time for this expat.

I'm not sure what I would do without seasons. Seasons for me help mark the passing of time. If it was sunny and 75º everyday, would it feel like the same day over again? Would you notice the ebb and flow of the days and your life as much? Do you mark the years by new years day, which would likely be the same as every other day? I adore seasons. I don't think I could live without them. I wouldn't want to live without them. The weather here has shifted, it is cold and rainy and grey. The mountains have snow on them again. These are the things that allow me to grasp the fact that Zach really has been here a year. And that a lot of things have happened between then and now. That's how it goes I guess.

So on to the dessert - warm apples in caramel over toast (with ice cream if you wish). The apples themselves are super quick and easy and barely take any time at all. Easy as pie. Actually much easier than pie. No crust to make or roll out, no fancy designs, no baking, just apples with butter and sugar on the stove. And that's it.

Of course I made it a bit more complicated by making the bread too. I had seen this Easy Little Bread recipe and decided that easy bread went well with easy apples so I best make them both.
I've recently fallen in love with my kitchen scale. It's incredible. Of course it's much easier to use when recipes note the weights otherwise I have to search around the internet for the approximate weight of a cup of this or that. It really makes things easy. You just clear the scale before each new ingredient, allowing you to use one bowl for everything instead of nine-hundred little spoons and cups and measuring thingys. Try it. It's kinda fun and it's especially helpful if you live in metric land, stuck between grams and ounces.
It was one of those weekends where it was okay to stay inside. It was rainy and grey all day on Saturday and spotty on Sunday. Zach and I have recently become addicted to 'Words With Friends' the scrabble app. Sure we play with friends back home, but we also play with each other, sometimes two games at once. Zach has won almost all of the games (grumble) managing to eek out over 40 points on most of his words, while I'm excited if I get anywhere over 20. Have you ever seen one word get over 80 points? Me either, until Zach played 'cronies' for 87 points in a game against our friend Perrin - Per good luck coming back from that one. Oh and it's the perfect thing to do while you're waiting for the bread to rise (I place the loaf pan over the pre-heated oven since our kitchen is fairly cold).

Early Autumn Apples on Toast

from Nigel Slater - Tender Volume II

4 small dessert apples

3 plums (optional, I used them because I had them lying around)

a little lemon juice

50g/ 1/2 stick of butter

2 heaping tablespoons of golden caster sugar or superfine sugar

a handful of raisins

a knifepoint of ground cinnamon

Toast slices (1 - 2 per person depending on the size of your bread) made from hearty whole wheat or nut and raisin bread

Quarter the apples then core them. Leave the skin on. Slice the apples thickly (8 slices per apple) and the toss them with the lemon juice, which will help keep them from browning. Do the same for the plums and add to the apples.

Melt the butter in a shallow pan. Before it froths stir in the sugar and leave it to bubble for a minute or two. Add in the apples/plums and let them cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft. Stir in the raisins and cinnamon

Have the toast ready. As soon as the apples are soft and lightly coated in caramel, tip them over the toast. A dollop of ice cream is never a bad idea!

easy little bread recipe from this book

1 cup plain flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup rolled oats (not instant)

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cups warm water

2 tsp dry yeast

1 tbsp honey

a handful of raisins (my own addition)

oil and butter for greasing the pan

Preheat your oven to 350ºF/180ºC

Mix flours, oats and salt together.

Mix yeast into warm water until dissolved then stir in honey.

Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and mix well. Grease an 8cup loaf pan (9x5x3) and pour dough into the pan. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let it rest for thirty minutes or until it has doubled in size. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

We ate it all. There were no apples left. I'm actually not sure how many people it was supposed to serve, but it served us just fine!

The season of eating is upon us, and I love it! Dreaming of turkey and stuffing already. I hear it's beautiful on the East Coast so perhaps you don't feel the urge to bundle up and stay inside and eat warm apples...but you will...soon enough! Enjoy the last of the sun while you can.

autumn soup (with bacon and cheddar!)

This past weekend wasn't particularly fall-ish, with it's muggy days and hazy skies, but then again it wasn't especially summery either with daylight fading before dinner was even served and chilly nights that make you thankful for a cozy comforter. The weather seems to have a hold on me these days. I think I've probably mentioned it in every post since I first 'felt' fall. No matter what the weather, it was a perfect weekend to spend exploring the city with our visitor! We went on a day trip (more on that later), we explored the flea market, we had a beer by the side of the lake and we went on a couple long walks. It was heavenly. Heavenly until I had to walk Kerry to the train and say goodbye. Off she went, towards the airport and eventually Kenya, and here I am still in Zürich. And of course she had to leave on a a Sunday, one of the more depressing days in the Swiss week, when everything is closed and the city feels deserted (aside from that weird bike/balloon fair that was happening alongside the Limmat). Obviously it was time to do some cooking, but what to cook? Ker and I had chatted a bit about our similar lunch conundrum, which is basically, 'what on earth to eat for lunch?' We both love yogurt with honey and muesli for breakfast and hot savory meals for dinner, but aren't especially keen on the cold sandwich or salad that typically make up lunch. I'm generally not a huge leftovers fan, but she convinced me, as we munched on day old risotto and pork tenderloin, that it is actually the perfect lunch. When leftovers aren't an option then it's soup for Kerry. She'll tell you that she happily ate the same lentil soup almost everyday for lunch when she was clerking in Brooklyn. It was warm and satisfying and when you include the pita that it came with, just enough to hold her until dinner, or at least until that afternoon snack.

Soup was the perfect comfort food for my mood yesterday. But I wasn't sure I'd be able to find all the ingredients at the train station grocery store, which is the only one open on Sundays. No trips to specialty stores or farmers markets, I'd be stuck with what they had, which always questionable on a Sunday because the market is packed to the gills with people, people who seem convinced that they'll never be able to buy food again. Thankfully the hoards of people left some butternut squash and apples for me and I set out to make this Autumn inspired vegetable soup.

The soup is almost entirely vegetable based. It's delicious on it's own, but for some reason I have a mental block where I can't eat soup without some type of bread, whether it's a slice, a roll or a crouton. When a soup is smooth I need some crunch. That's where the cheddar croutons come in, oh yeah, and the bacon bits! crunch crunch. The bacon and the cheddar pair well with each other, obviously, but they also pair really well with the butternut-apple flavor of the soup.

This recipe caught my eye when I saw that it started with bacon! It's from the Gourmet website.

butternut- apple soup - very slightly adapted from above recipe

- 8 slices of bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2" pieces

- 2 celery ribs, chopped

- 1 carrot, chopped

- 1 medium onion, chopped

- 1 leek, chopped

- 1/4 tsp cinnamon

- 3/4 lb boiling potatoes

- 3 medium Granny Smith apples, or other tart apples

- 1 1/2 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded and 1/2" pieces (3 1/2 to 4 cups)

- 2 cups reduced-sodium chicken stock or broth (since it's hard to find in Switzerland and expensive when I do find it, I make my own roughly based on this recipe)

- 2 to 2 1/2 cups of water

- Garnish sour cream

cheddar croutons

- 1/2 loaf of wurzelbrot (twisted bread) or whatever leftover bread you have on hand, cut into 1"x1" pieces

- 1/4 tsp of ground cumin, more or less to taste

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 2 tablespoons olive oil

- 2/3 cup of grated cheddar cheese

Cook bacon in a heavy pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally so that it doesn't stick to the bottom, until crisp. Spread out on a paper towel to let the grease drain, leaving roughly 2 tablespoons of fat in the pot (add vegetable oil if your bacon doesn't yield enough fat).

Cook celery, carrot, onion and leek in fat in pot over low heat, keeping the pot covered and stirring occasionally. Cook for roughly 10-12 minutes until vegetables are soft and translucent but not brown. (If you aren't a bacon fan you can always use 2 tablespoons of olive oil instead)

While the vegetable are cooking peel and roughly chop 2 apples, the potatoes and the butternut squash. Stir into the onion mix, adding the stock, water, 1tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of pepper. Turn up the heat and once the liquid begins to boil turn it back down to a simmer and let it simmer for 20minutes until the vegetable are tender.

While your soup is cooking make the croutons. Preheat the oven to 400ºF/200ºC and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. In a bowl mix the bread with olive oil, salt, cumin and olive oil. Place the bread on a baking sheet in one even layer. Bake the bread for 5 minutes to toast it, keep an eye on it, you just want it to be lightly golden brown. Remove from oven, sprinkle the cheese over the pieces and then place back in the oven to melt the cheese. Don't worry about the cheese that lands on the aluminum foil and not on the bread, that will turn into nice little cheese crisps.

Using an immersion blender, puree the soup right in the pot. If using a blender, puree the soup in a few batches. Add additional water to achieve desired consistency. Serve hot with bacon, croutons, sour cream and some sliced apple.

The soup quickly became a vehicle through which to eat bacon and cheddar croutons. We kept refilling on the toppings without adding anymore soup. Cognizant of our expanding waistlines and of the preciousness of these fleeting summer days we went for a long walk up by the zoo. The haze obscured our view of the mountains, but it was still nice walk and a relaxing, albeit sweaty, end to a wonderful weekend.

I'm cozied up here with my second cup of coffee, but I'm thinking I should switch to ice coffee. In the time it has taken me to write this post the weather has shifted from cool and foggy to hot and hazy. And wow, I made this second batch of coffee really strong. Maybe it will propel me to actually get some things done today, or maybe it will just get me so riled up that I can't accomplish anything at all.

If you are looking for some events to put on your calendar this week be sure to visit Girlfriend Guide to Zürich, where this post is being featured as the recipe of the week. I know they have a Zürich Film Festival offer and some upcoming Girls Nights Out.

Okay off to try and check some things off the to-do list.

tea time and me time

It's a bit crazy to think that even though I'm currently unemployed I still have a hard time carving out a bit of time in my day to just relax and indulge in the little things that I love - like a cup of coffee and a stack of deliciously glossy American mags. I went a little overboard in Hudson News at JFK and treated myself to upwards of 18 magazines, from food to fashion and everything in between, and I decided to read a few of them yesterday with an afternoon coffee. Add a flakey, buttery apple tart to the mix and I'm in heaven.
Speaking of heaven, the weather in Zurich has been absolutely incredible AND I finally bought a coffee maker. I was having a hard time spending $100 on a cheap plastic coffee maker, but I couldn't find a cheaper one that looked half decent and I NEEDED coffee. I'm not sure all my lovely blog readers in the states realize how rare a nice big cup of coffee is in Zurich. If you order café you are going to get a tiny, milk-less shot of espresso, which is certainly delicious, but an entirely different drink all together. Add some steamed and foamy milk to that café and call it a cappuccino and I'll drink it up in a second, but I'm not quite ready to sip the dark and strong straight-up espresso. Something to aspire to... If the mention of butter makes you jump on the stair-master then this recipe is not for you. This tart is o-so-buttery and delicious. First it's the butter that goes in the dough and then it's the butter that is rubbed on the dough once it is formed around the apples and even then it's the butter that is poured over the apples once they are in the tart. Since moving to Zurich I have actually found a love for butter that I never new I had. The butter here is yellow and creamy and I wouldn't be surprised if it replaces the cheese on my afternoon piece of toast.
apple tart ingredients:

I used a combo of recipes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food and an apple tart recipe from the most recent Savour

the dough

- 2 cups all purpose flour

- 1/2 tsp salt if using unsalted butter

- 12 tablespoons (1.5 sticks) of butter

- 1/2 cup of ice cold water

this recipe makes two balls of dough, enough for two 11" tarts

Work the butter into the flour with a couple of knives and then with your fingers, leaving some fairly large, irregular pieces (1-2 minutes). Pour 3/4 of the ice cold water in a little bit at a time, stirring continuously with a fork. Keep adding water until the dough begins to form clumps. Add the remaining 1/4 of water if needed. Divide dough into two balls, form each into a ball, wrap in plastic and flatten them into disks. Refrigerate for at least an hour. I made my dough the day before and let it sit for a night.

the tart

- 4 apples, peeled cored and finely sliced. I sliced way too many apples, but I also realized that I could have added some more to the tart before baking

- 2 tbs of chunky sugar for the crust

- 2 tbs normal sugar to sprinkle on the apples

- 2 tbs butter - melted to spread on dough

- 3 tbs strained apricot preserves

Roll out the dough until it is approximately 1/16" - 1/8" thick. Place apples in a spiral pattern, leaving a 1.5" border around the edge. Continue concentric circles until apples are roughly 1.5"-2" thick. Fold up the edges and pinch to keep in place. Brush the melted butter on the dough butter - be generous! Pour any additional butter over the apples. Sprinkle chunky sugar on the dough and fine sugar on the apples. Bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees or until crust is golden brown. While tart is baking heat up the preserves over low heat with a tablespoon of water. While tart is cooling brush on the apples, or serve on the side.

Don't worry Zach helped me eat the rest of the tart last night for desert, after our dinner of leftover shepherd's pie (leftover shepherd's pie is almost better than fresh out of the oven shepherd's pie).
Coral peonies in House Beautiful...wedding inspiration!!! Eat, read, sip some coffee and enjoy.