First. I'm sitting on one of my Moroccan leather poufs, exhausted after a full day of moderating for the NJ Middle School Science Bowl. It was a blast! I love the students' enthusiasm. Tomorrow, we get to do it all over again with the high schoolers. SCIENCE!
I will probably go to bed at 8pm. Not even joking.
On Wednesday, I registered for my third marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon!
They are ALREADY sold out. This race is going to be awesome.
To prove that I still knit, on this here "physikerin knits" blog, here's a picture of the afghan I recently finished for Meg and Luc's wedding. Which, if we're counting, was four months ago.
(pre-woven-in-ends)
Here's their full gift ("a date night in"):
Public Service Announcement: Wegman's olives are yummy, but do not come in shatter-proof jars.
Boo.
Now on to CAKE! This was for our graduate department's February birthday club.
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#83 Karamellisierter Apfelkuchen
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Karamellisierter=caramelized
Apfel=apple
Kuchen=cake
I turned on some Doctor Who or Catherine Tate Show and set to it. To fill a 13x9 pan, I doubled the recipe. The batter is a simple vanilla cake with lemon zest and LOTS of butter:
The topping is the labor-intensive part. Take beautiful Granny Smith apples:
Do this to them:
And finally this:
An apple-peeler-corer would've been useful.
I did not need to double the apples; I had about two apples' worth of slices leftover, so I saved them for my breakfast smoothies.
Have you ever made caramel? The process was like MAGIC! I added a ton of butter, a barrel of sugar, and a bit of water to a pan over low heat and started stirring. The butter melted and mixed with the sugar to form a grainy paste. I stirred and stirred. I checked the directions again closely and stirred some more. Just when I was about to doubt my German and find the dictionary, the grainy paste miraculously and almost instantaneously dissolved into a smooth, bubbling, brown caramel mixture! It was beautiful. Go try it.
(I should have taken pictures.)
Now, this cake is an upside-down cake. First, I spread caramel on the bottom of the greased 13x9 pan. Then, after dipping the apple slices in lemon juice, I set them into the soft caramel. Finally, I spread cake batter on top:
After a good 50 minutes and most of a Tom Baker episode later, the cake was golden-brown. Remember how it's an upside-down cake? Yeah, I needed to get this:
Onto this cookie sheet:
...before it cooled too much and the caramel stuck to the bottom. Right. So, ready, set, pray hard, flip-the-super-hot-glass-pan-over-onto-the-cookie-sheet-GO!
PRAISE THE LORD! I DIDN'T BREAK ANYTHING!
But will it lift off without destroying the cake? Hmm...
YES! YES IT WILL!!!!
There were some losses:
But I dealt. With a spoon. And knife.
Sadly, I couldn't serve it warm. It should be. The grads once again devoured it anyway. Barbara brought vanilla ice cream, too! The cake is quite moist and dense, the caramel super sweet, and the apples let us pretend it had some nutritional value. Overall: success!
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Changes made:
~Doubled the recipe
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Next time would:
~Serve it warm
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Perfect for:
~Breakfast
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And finally, I leave you with a picture of Man-Who-Wishes-He-Could-Attack-the-Geese:
Isn't he TALL?
Okay, maybe I'll be in bed by 9pm. Goodnight! :)
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