What we did (and ate) on our winter vacation ... part 2 / apple cake

Whenever we're in the Fort Lauderdale area, we always dine at the internationally known vegan restaurant, Sublime. In the past I've noted that Sublime tries very hard to appeal to non-vegetarians by simulating familiar meat-and-chicken-based dishes instead of focusing on the creative use of fresh vegetables, but as the only veg restaurant for miles around, I can understand their position. They've managed to be successful as a vegan restaurant in a steak and seafood world. And I really liked their new menu, which seemed to have more veggie-centered choices.

Sublime is a beautiful and calming space with very good food, and the waitstaff is friendly and helpful. Dining there is always enjoyable, and our latest visit was no exception, though we started the evening with a slight mishap. My sister-in-law had postcards (which were expiring the next day) offering $10 off two entrées, and we planned to use them to defray the high cost of eating at Sublime. As we arrived, my brother realized that he'd forgotten to bring the coupons. We went back and forth about whether to mention this to our server, but when the restaurant owner came to our table to greet us, we told her about the oversight. At first she seemed very pleased that her postcard had pulled us into the restaurant, and appeared to be considering what to do. Then she chirped, "I guess you'll just have to come back again tomorrow," and quickly took off. Oh well. It wouldn't have cost her very much to create a little seasonal good will but I guess we all make our choices.

For starters we shared an order of frito misto, shown at the top of the page. This is crispy cauliflower with sweet chili sauce, and it's addictively good. I've tried to duplicate this at home in the past and was very successful, but unfortunately I didn't write down the recipe so I'll have to try again.



For my entrée I chose the portobella stack with sautéed greens and mashed cauliflower. I'm a sucker for portobella dishes and, besides, this entrée came with the most vegetables. The smallish mushroom came layered with spinach, tomato, thinly sliced potato and a brown sauce. It was really good.



My husband chose a salad and the "four sides" entrée option, and he picked barbecued tofu, asparagus, coleslaw and mashed cauliflower. He enjoyed his dinner.



My brother and s-i-l shared a caesar salad and a "steak" sandwich with oven sweet potato fries. The salad came with several small pieces of fried artichoke hearts, which I thought was very clever. I think all four of us enjoyed this year's visit to Sublime (except for the coupon mishap) and will return again when we're back in the area. The food is organic and vegan, and all profits go towards animal welfare.



After dinner, we visited a street in Pompano Beach where every house on both sides of the street participates in extreme Christmas decorating excess. The pictures really don't do justice to the mind-boggling display of light and color.









All vacations must come to an end, so on New Year's Eve we left for the airport at 7:30 a.m. We were conscious of potentially increased security measures following the underwear-explosives incident on the airliner from Amsterdam. I packed very carefully, trying to minimize the chances of having myself or my luggage searched. Security was surprisingly fast and easy in spite of the fact I totally forgot to remove and display my one quart plastic zip-bag of personal explosives. No one called me out or even removed my empty stainless steel water bottle from my backpack pocket to shake it. This seemed rather slack considering the scrutiny I've encountered in the past.



Anyway, we got home in time to have a New Year's Eve dinner with our son, d-i-l, granddaughter and their friends. My daughter-in-law cooked a meal entirely from The Urban Vegan cookbook and it was delicious. Above you can see my plate with chickpea paprikash and spaetzle, snap peas in garlic and olive oil, and salad greens with croutons.



For a brunch at our kids' house on Sunday I made black-eyed-pea salsa (Texas caviar) from this recipe except I cooked the beans from scratch, and used parsley instead of cilantro to accommodate my favorite cilantro-hater.


No slivered almonds on or in my cake (cake #2)

I also made an apple cake from Bryanna Clark Grogan's blog but with several alterations. I'll give you the excellent original recipe (with permission), and then a second recipe with my changes. I ran out of sugar when I made it the first time so used cinnamon and a little agave for the topping, but that results in a pale-looking (but still delicious) cake. Sugar works much better. I also added dried cranberries with the apples, and no almonds on top due to my dislike for nuts in cake. The cake was delicious but tasted too sweet for my warped taste buds so I revised it a bit when I made it the second time. It still tastes sweet to me but everyone else loves it so I think I'll leave it alone for now.

Original recipe:
BRYANNA’S RUSTIC APPLE-ALMOND CAKE
makes 1/ 9x13" cake

Dry mix

• 1 and 3/4 cups wholewheat pastry flour PLUS 1/4 c. oat bran
• OR 2 cups wholewheat pastry flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 2 cups chopped apples (I don't peel them if they are organic)
  

Wet mix

• 1/3 cup smooth unsweetened applesauce
• 3 Tbs. oil
• 1 cup unbleached organic granulated sugar
• 7/8 cup nondairy milk

Topping

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 cup slivered, blanched almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x13" cake pan.

1. Whisk together the dry mix ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Stir in the apples.
3. In a blender, blend the wet mix ingredients until smooth.
4. Mix the Wet Mix into dry mix, stirring as briefly as possible.
5. Spread into prepared pan.
6. Mix the topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the cake. Bake 35 minutes. Test for doneness.
7. Cool on a rack and serve right out of the pan, cut into squares.

..................................................................




Apple-cranberry cake (adapted from Bryanna's rustic apple-almond cake)
This cake is so easy and delicious — wonderfully soft and moist — it's destined to become a new favorite at our house!

Dry mix

• 2 cups white wholewheat flour
  
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp spice mix* (or cinnamon) see note below
  
• 2+ cups apple, chopped into 1/2" pieces (Don't peel if organic) (I used two med.-lg. apples)
• 1 cup whole cranberries (mine were frozen), each berry cut in half or 1/2 cup dried
  

Wet mix

• 1/3 cup smooth unsweetened applesauce
• 3 Tbs. oil
• 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
  
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup unbleached organic granulated sugar (evaporated cane juice) If using dried cranberries, the cake is very sweet. If you like cake less sweet, use 1/2 cup.
  
• 7/8 cup nondairy milk or amazake (Amazake gives great texture.)
  

Topping

• 1/4 cup evaporated cane juice
  
• 1 tsp. spice mix* (or cinnamon) see note below
  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x13" cake pan.

1. Whisk together the dry mix ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Stir in the apples and cranberries.
3. In a blender, blend the wet mix ingredients until smooth. (I just beat them with a spoon.)
   
4. Fold the wet mix into dry mix, stirring as briefly as possible. The batter will be very thick.
   
5. Spread evenly into prepared pan.
6. Mix the topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Sprinkle half the topping evenly over the cake. Swirl in gently with a knife. (Don't knock yourself out with the swirling; the batter is too thick for real swirling.)
7. Sprinkle on the rest of the topping.
   
8. Bake 35 minutes. Test for doneness.
9. Cool on a rack and serve from the pan, cut into squares.

Note: *I used speculoos spice mix from Seitan is my motor (except mine has allspice instead of cloves, and extra coriander) to flavor the cake. (to make a batch: 1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ground allspice, 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom, 1/4 tsp. ground coriander, 1/8 tsp. ground ginger, 1/4 tsp. fresh ground nutmeg) Follow this link to find out more. I had previously mixed a lot to keep handy with my other spices so it was right there waiting for me when I made the cake.

Post Thanksgiving wrap-up (only a week late)

After reading about so many of your amazing Thanksgiving celebrations, I'm finally getting around to noting ours. We went to a potluck celebration at our friends' house in the country, and the amount and variety of food was astounding. Naturally, I forgot to bring the camera, but you can get a little sense of the celebration here. For our contribution to the meal, I made stuffed roasted seitan and apple-cranberry sauce. My husband made delicious chocolate chip cookies.



I photographed the seitan still in its baking dish (top photo) before we left the house, and we took the serving platter with us. On the plate l'm showing leftovers that we had the next night, since as I said, I didn't bring my camera to the event. The seitan was stuffed with brown basmati rice, wild rice and whole wheat bread cubes with onions, mushrooms, garlic, celery, chipotlé, dried apricots and I can't remember what else. One of these days I should write down a recipe so I can make it the same way twice, but it hasn't happened yet.



And this is my after Thanksgiving breakfast—oatmeal topped with cranberry-apple sauce. Wisconsin is a big cranberry growing state so both the cranberries and the apples were local.

Cranberry-apple sauce

I always stock up on cranberries in the fall. I buy them at the farmers market and freeze them so I can make cranberry sauce or cranberry muffins the rest of the year. If you don't have any, you can usually find them in the frozen fruit section of the grocery store.

This cranberry sauce usually shows up at most holiday dinners at our house. I've never had a recipe for it and it has kind of morphed over the years from strawberry-cranberry to apple-cranberry. I'm not sure when that happened, but I probably was out of strawberries one holiday and substituted apples and liked it better. I never measure the ingredients and usually give vague quantities when asked for a recipe, but this time I tried to keep track of what I was doing because I've been asked so many times for the recipe that I decided to make one. Here's what I think it is - more or less. The basic idea is to have approximately equal amounts of both fruits, so depending on the size of your apples, you may need more or less than five.

If you cook the sauce with apple juice you will need less sweetener. I prefer my sauce on the tart side so I add very little sweetener - maybe 1/4 cup - to get the taste I like. I usually use apple juice but forgot to buy it so I used water this time, but it was still pretty sweet because of all the apples, so I think I added about 1/4 cup of agave syrup. Sometimes I use maple syrup and sometimes Sucanot or sorghum. Use your favorite in the amount you prefer.

Cranberry-apple sauce
-1 bag of cranberries (about a pound, more or less)
-about 5 cooking apples, cut into cubes about the size of cranberries
-handful of raisins
-cinnamon stick or 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon good vanilla
-2 teaspoons agar agar flakes plus 1/4 cup cold water
-1 tablespoon kudzu or arrowroot plus small amount water for dissolving
-1 cup apple juice
-sweetener of your choice (I use maple syrup or agavé syrup)

Sprinkle the agar agar into the 1/4 cup cold water and let soften while you wash and cut the apples. Combine the cranberries, apples, raisins, cinnamon stick and water or juice in a large pot. Bring to a boil, add the agar agar and stir it in. Reduce the heat and bubble gently for about 10 minutes - or until the cranberries open, the apples soften and the agar agar is dissolved. Place the kudzu or arrowroot (or cornstarch) in a cup and add just enough water to dissolve it. Add this to the sauce and bubble for a minute until the sauce clarifies. Add the sweetener of your choice in the amount you prefer. (Start with 1/4 cup for tangy sauce.) Add vanilla. Transfer to a bowl and cool.

What's for dessert?: baked apples

It was a grey, gloomy, unusually warm day. Since we're still buried under heaps of snow, the warm air in contact with the snow caused a dense fog. This kind of dense, damp, dreary day makes me want an old-fashioned, comforting dessert – like baked apples. Baked apples are so ordinary that no one ever thinks of making them, or serving them to company, but that's also what makes them special. They are so cheerful that when people see them they are always surprised and delighted. And they are as easy to make as a dessert can be.

Use baking apples. (Cortlands are really good but don't use red delicious.) Core the apples. The easiest way to core apples is with an apple corer. Set the apple on a wooden board and place the corer into the apple at the stem so that it is perpendicular to the board. Don't worry if the apple is tilting. Aim straight down.

Peel the top inch or so of each apple. Put the cored apples in a baking dish, and fill the centers with raisins or other dried fruit. (Chopped apricots are more tangy.) Carefully lift and turn each apple upside down and stuff more fruit into the hole. When all the apples are stuffed and in the dish, put about 1/2 inch of water into the dish and place into a pre-heated 400˚ oven.

Bake about 30 to 45 minutes. Different types of apples have different baking times so after 30 minutes, check each five minutes or so until they are soft but still holding their shape. Baste the apples with the liquid a few times during baking if you remember. If not, baste when you take them out. At this point you can sprinkle with a little cinnamon and serve the apples warm or chilled.

I threw a handful of cranberries into the dish for the last ten minutes of baking time (I baked my apples for 45 minutes) intending to use the berries for decoration on the serving plate. At the last minute, I decided to make a sauce instead.
I put about 1/4 cup of brown rice syrup into a small saucepan and warmed it up. To this I added the liquid and cranberries that were in the baking dish. I dissolved about a teaspoon of arrowroot in a tablespoon of water and added it to the bubbling syrup, cooking until clear and slightly thickened. I removed the pot from the heat, stirred in a teaspoon of vanilla and poured the sauce over the apples. Beautiful and yummy.