Filed under: Italian, dessert, snack | Tags: blue cheese, bread, bruschetta, gorgonzola, honey, Italian, vegetarian
Is that not the most beautiful dish you’ve ever seen? Giada De Laurentiis is responsible for this gem but I’ve made it a dozen times since I first saw it on Everyday Italian. Her recipe is Bruschetta with Gorgonzola Cheese and Honey, but you can use any blue cheese. The gorgonzola is to Italian it up. It is also creamery than other blue cheeses so it definitely makes a difference, but it is not the only way. I used blue cheese that my friend Karl gave to me in the library of all places and ‘creamy’ raw honey that I bought at the farmer’s market in North Carolina. The bread is a loaf of fresh baked 7 grain from New Pioneer Coop in Iowa City. They used Paul’s Grains 7 grain cereal and 7 grain flour in making it!
So here’s what to do:
Preheat oven to 375F.
Slice up a crusty loaf of bread (Giada says baguette)
Sprinkle with olive oil and toast.
When crispy and hot, remove the bread from the oven. At this point you can spread on thick raw honey like I did and then sprinkle it with cheese or you can add honey after it is done baking.
Put the bread back in the oven until the cheese melts. Put honey on or, if you already have, serve warm. This could be an appetizer or snack but I ate it as a meal with sauteed kale and Annie’s Natural Goddess Dressing. Per usual, I licked the bowl clean of the Natural Goddess Dressing.
This recipe is not cheap and not very local, but I wanted to make something really special for my really special friend Grace on her 20th birthday.
I flipped through Abby Mandel’s Celebrating the Midwestern Table for this dessert, one of Abby’s favorites: Caramel-Glazed Apple Chunk Cake. Yeah. This sounded right up Grace’s alley (or anyone with taste buds) and it’s apple season! My friends Marissa, Chloe, Marissa’s friend Trinity, and I baked it on Saturday afternoon, a good break from statistics homework.
Caramel-Glazed Apple Chunk (Birthday) Cake
Cake:
2 1/2 cups plus 1 tbl flour (available locally but I used flour that someone left in my cupboard)
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (I used ground nutmeg because my roommate had it)
1 tsp each: baking soda, salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar (maybe I will try this again sometime with honey to local-ize it)
3 large eggs (my local ingredient!)
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 tbl orange juice
1 1/2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2-inch chunks, about 3 1/4 cups (local!)
1 cup chopped pecans (local!)
Glaze:
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream
1. Put a rack in the center of the oven; preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease a 12-cup-capacity (10-inch) Bundt cake pan (a gift from Abby); lightly dust it with flour, tapping out the excess.
2. Sift (another gift from Abby) the 2 1/2 cups of flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
3. Use a mixer to beat the veggie oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla for 3 minutes. Add the sifted ingredients and the oj and mix until combined. Toss the apples and pecans with the remaining tablespoon of flour and stir them in the batter with a wooden spoon. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and smooth the surface.
(Trinity chopping apples and Chloe posing/mixing the batter)
4. Bake until a toothpick insterted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour.
5. While the cake is baking, bring all the ingredients for the glaze to a simmer in a small saucepan for 3 minutes, uncovered.
6. When the cake is done, let it rest on a cooling rack for 5 minutes. Invert the cake onto a rack placed on a sheet of foil. Brush the warm cake with the glaze, reapplying the glaze as it drips onto the foil. Let the cake rest 1 hour before serving.
7. The cake is best served warm. To reheat, place it on a baking sheet lined with foil. Bake in a pre-heated 350-degree oven about 8 to 10 minutes. Serve immediately.
Mandel, Abby. Celebrating the Midwestern Table: Real Food for Real Times. New York, NY: Doubleday. 1996. 288-89.
(The final product and handing it off to Grace before devouring it)
