Fresh Apple Cake (with sauce)

Recipe 3.

Fresh Apple Cake
(from the ladies at The Sisters Cafe)

4 cups peeled, diced apples (I used four small galas)
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup canola oil (I used vegetable oil, no biggie)
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans (I used walnuts instead, loved it)

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, stir together apples and sugar.  Add dry ingredients and stir well.  In a separate bowl, beat eggs, oil and vanilla. Stir egg mixture into apple mixture, blending until thoroughly moistened. Stir in pecans (or walnuts) Pour into greased 9x13, and bake for 50 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly pressed. Serve with warm cream sauce.

Cream Sauce
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla

Place all ingredients in saucepan and stir.  Bring to a boil and cook on medium-high for a few minutes.  Drizzle over pieces of apple cake and serve warm!

 Bon appetit! This cake was delicious and beautiful.  I left my cake in the oven when I ran to pick up a friend (don't worry, I left a roommate home so I wasn't worried about burning down the apartment complex), but I overcooked it just a tad.  But this cake is indestructible! Even a little browned, it was DELICIOUS! Suggestion: Make this when you plan on serving the whole thing to everyone that day.  It was still good three days later, but nothing beats a FRESH apple cake.


Be careful where you leave your camera while you bake, or you'll upload little surprises like this:

Monster Cookies

Recipe 2.

I've had these before and remembered them being a hit, and hoped the recipe's name rang true throughout the internet. They did! And they were a hit again. Fifty-two cookies gone in less than 24 hours. Make them. Really.

3 eggs
1 1/2 cups brown sugar (packed)
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp corn syrup
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup peanut butter
4 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup M&M's

I know, right? Everything good, ever, is in these cookies.

Just beat the eggs and keep mixing while you add everything (in order). Stick ice-cream-scoop-sized chunks into the oven at 350 degrees. 12-15 minutes later pull them out and have the best night of your life!

Molten Chocolate Cake

Recipe 1.

We'll kick it off with Martha, of course. Just a little tweaked to my tasting.

Molten Chocolate Cake (or Lava Cake)
serves 6 (don't worry, I quadrupled it)

4 tbsp. unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
8 oz. semisweet chocolate, melted
powdered sugar or vanilla ice cream for serving

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter the muffin tins and evenly dust with sugar. Set aside.

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy and add eggs one at a time while beating.  Beat in flour and salt until combined and then beat in ALL the chocolate. Pour into tin.

Bake 8-10 minutes, let stand 10 minutes. Flip cakes over onto a baking sheet and then serve with powdered sugar dusted on top (or vanilla ice cream, woo!).


Seriously, this was my first shot at molten cake and they turned out PERFECT! Good enough to share with boys. Some of them are the very boys I'm sitting with right now, watching the BYU basketball game. SHOUT OUT! Feel important Brandon, Zane, and of course my roommate Kendra who lets me borrow ingredients all the time.

Seeing as it was the beginning of my Project Bake and I didn't know I would be documenting it, I forgot to take pictures!! Here is Martha's version:

find her more perfect recipe here.

the project.

After much ado and hesitation, I am finally here to present to you:

Remind you of Julie and Julia? That's because that's where I got this whole crazy idea.

While I have lower expectations for myself and don't think this will change my life the way it changed Julia's, it is the same basic plan.

By the end of 2011, I'll have baked 100 recipes that I haven't baked before. I can't afford baking and pastry school (and probably couldn't get in), so I've decided to become my own teacher. There are technically only 306 days left in the year, and I've only got 96 more recipes to go, but I decided to include January, February, and my 4 previous creations into the project. 

Most of my recipes will fall under the following categories:

Bread

Cake

Chocolate

Cookies

Pastries

Pies

I know there are way too many logistics but, as an engineer's daughter, I had to go through all of this in my head before making it public. And now you get to hear about all of it!

Any recipe suggestions? Please send them my way at brestutz {at} gmail . com.

Hopefully in the end, it will turn into a small but beautiful cookbook.