Apple-Cinnamon Coffee Cake

Two things have happened in the last six months that have inspired me to begin my adventures in cooking. First of all, I retired from my very demanding, yet very rewarding position as executive director of New Hope, a non-profit organization in Oklahoma that works with children who have a parent in prison. I now have time on my hands. Secondly, we had our kitchen renovated. New paint, new floor, new countertops, new stove and ovens, new sinks and new backsplash. And perhaps best of all, a new pantry. I have always loved to cook, but now I have the time and it is more fun than ever in my new kitchen.

Many years ago my mother used to give me a subscription to Bon Appetit each year for Christmas. I use to love to read the magazines from cover to cover each month. Unfortunately I rarely had time to make any of the recipes because I was so busy at work and exhausted when I got home. So now that I have time and years worth of monthly Bon Appetits, I decided to choose a magizine at random at least once a week and make a recipe or two from it.

The first volume I picked was December 1994. There were two recipe's that attracted my attention. The first was a recipe for Five-Onion Soup from the R.S.V.P section. This is the section where readers write in and ask the magazine's staff to get a recipe for a favorite dish they discovered at a restaurant. It is one of my favorite sections. I haven't made the soup yet but hope to in the next week. The second recipe was also from the R.S.V.P. section. It is Apple-Cinnamon Coffee Cake from Chanterelle's in Edmonds, Washington. It is a fairly easy recipe and it was quite delicious.

Growing up, we always had pork chops, baked beans and coffee cake on Saturday nights. I think my mom didn't like to come up with new ideas for dinner so it was pretty much the same thing every week. Mondays and Tuesdays I don't remember except that we always had steak one night a week and it might have been one of those nights. Wednesday, we always had Swanson's Chicken Pot Pies as that was my parent's date night. Thursdays was usually leftovers; Friday was always some kind of fish. Sometimes Tuna Casserole, sometimes creamed Salmon on Toast, sometimes just some broiled fish. Sundays as I remember, we rotated between Lamb at our house and fried chicken when we went to Aunt Helen's house. She made the best fried chicken ever and I never realized how much work it must have been for her preparing chicken for the nine of us plus she and Uncle Ted. My twin sister Gail and I often spent the night over at her house on weekends. Besides the great chicken, she made oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips and always had fudgies for my sister and I to eat. I am blessed to have inherited Aunt Helen's dinette set. My mother told us how proud she was when she had saved up enough money to buy it. She worked at Halmark in Kansas City. I love eating at that table remembering the times that we all ate around it when we went to her house on Sundays. One of the chairs broke a couple of years ago and I finally got around to getting it fixed. Just brought it home today.

Anyway, back to the meal. Since Randy and I have a stewardship dinner to go to tomorrow night, I decided to fix pork, beans and coffee cake tonight (Friday). I much prefered Saturday's Pork Chops and beans to Friday's fish and besides I had a pork tenderloin in the refrigerator that I needed to use. Mother's pork chops were always dry and not very tasty. She would simply put a little oil in a pan and fry the pork chops. When I started cooking pork chops I discovered if I floured them and cooked them in a little more oil, that they were better. But I really prefer a pork roast or even better pork tenderloin. It is so easy just to salt and pepper and pop into the oven. Tonight I actually used a rub from Hasty Bake. One of my goals is to not waste food. Someone had given me this rub a while back and I have never used it. So I thought I would try it on the pork. Pretty good. I really like to cook from scratch but the one thing I haven't attempted yet is homemade pork and beans. I love Bush's homestyle beans, (my mother always used Van Camp) so I just open up the can and heat it up. But everything else is from scratch. Apple sauce is easy and so much better than the jarred stuff. Just peel one and a half to two apples per serving, cut them up into chunks, put a tablespoon or two of water in a pan and add the apples. Cook over medium heat until the apples are soft. Add a little sugar if you wish and a little cinnamon and mash with a potato masher. Make it chunky or fine depending on your taste and serve warm or make ahead and serve cold.

Now about apples. My favorite apples in the whole world are Jonathans. They are tart and crisp and so delicious. Unfortunately, you can't get Jonathan apples in Oklahoma. Imagine my surprise and delight when I went to the store yesterday and I found a bag of apples that were labeled Jonathan Apples from Missouri. I of course bought them. When I got them home and bit into one, however, I was sorely disappointed. They were kind of mushy and not all that flavorful. My educated guess is that they were last year's crop and had been sitting in cold storage for a year. I am determined to go up to a Missouri orchard this fall just to get some Jonathans. However, I had these apples and because I am bent on not wasting food, I used them both for the apple sauce and in the coffee cake and they were fine.



On to the coffee cake. My mother always bought a Sara Lee pecan coffee cake to go with the pork chops and beans. It was the best part of the meal and I suspect I never got as much as I wanted because as I said previously, there were nine of us and that meant a small piece of cake for everyone. I am certain I rejoiced when my older siblings went off to college because it meant more Sara Lee for me. But, I love baking from scratch so no more Sara Lee. Probably lots of preservatives and other unnecessary ingredients. (Another plan I have is to not buy anything that has more than three ingredients listed.) Last week I tried a plum coffee cake which was pretty awful. This week I made the Apple-Cinnamon Coffee Cake. I was hoping I could just direct you to www.epicurious.com to get the recipe but it doesn't seem to be there. It is possible that they aren't allowed to publish on line the recipes from retaurants. Anyway, if you want the recipe, let me know and I'll send it to you. One precaution. It called for a nine-inch square pan and I didn't have one so I put it in a nine-inch round one. I should have known better when the batter was all of the way to the top but I put it in the oven anyway and now my new oven has coffee cake all over the bottom of it, not to mention we had to disable all of the smoke alarms in the house. But it was worth it. I would definitely make this recipe again.