Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Applesauce Cake


I made this applesauce cake with homemade apple-raspberry sauce (hence the pinkish tinge to the cake). For the topping, I made a traditional cream cheese frosting and added some toasted pecans.

Friday, October 3, 2008

The Best Muffins


I'm not always necessarily fond of Cook's Illustrated's self-aggrandizing need to label their recipes "best." I think that there can be wiggle room for tweaking and customizing recipes here and there. Besides, what is best to one palate is maybe not someone else's cup of tea.

That said, I used a CI recipe to make a batch of Mocha Chip Muffins, and they are amazing. They taste great (not too sweet, nice coffee flavor), and look terrific (big domed top, firm moist crumb). The batter is stiffer than other muffin batters I've baked with lately. I was a little afraid that I was overfilling the muffin tin, but that stiff batter worked out: The muffins didn't overflow the pan, just baked up nice and tall.

I made the Mocha Chip Muffins (photo above) for a meeting I attended tonight, and I've got a batch of plain chocolate-chip muffins (photo below) in the oven to go to the skating rink tomorrow morning.

I will be using this recipe again. Probably frequently.