Oatmeal Apricot Spice Cake

So for gift day this year, Gabe's mom gave him a package of glaceed apricots. think of a dried apricot. now imagine taking a syringe full of sugar syrup and injecting it directly into the dried apricot until it fills to the point of bursting. now dump that apricot in a bucket of sugar syrup and let it sit for several weeks. needless to say, these things are so rich that eating just one makes you feel nauseous. so, to use them up before gabe ate the whole thing in one sitting and proceeded to vomit all over our recently-cleaned apartment, i decided to make cake. yes, despite all the sugar and cream cheese frosting, a whole big slice of this cake is less rich than a single glaceed apricot.

this cake is pretty dense and hearty, definitely a winter cake, but very good. if you slightly reduced the sugar and left off the frosting, it would make a great breakfast or lunch snack. the original recipe called for just cinnamon and nutmeg, but we added lots of cardamom to make it chai-ful and delicious. we decorated it with walnuts and slices of the apricots. if you're making it without the frosting, i would add some chopped apricots right into the batter.

Oatmeal Apricot Spice Cake

Adapted from dyln.com

1 & 1/4 cup dark beer
1 cup regular rolled oats

1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup granulated white sugar (reduce to 1/2 cup if you want a less sweet cake)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbs grated lemon zest (we used grapefruit)

1 & 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom to taste

1/2 cup chopped dried (or glaceed) apricots, mixed with flour to prevent sticking
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped fine (optional - for decoration or to fold into the batter)

Mix together the oats and beer and let them soak for at least 1/2 hour, preferable a whole hour.

Preheat the oven to 350. Prepare a spring-form pan by greasing it and lining it with some parchment paper.

Cream the butter and sugars, and then beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla and zest. Mix the dry ingredients. Add them to the sugar-butter alternately oatmeal, starting and ending with dry. Fold in the apricots and optionally the walnuts. Pour into the prepared pan and bake about 40 minutes, or until firm in the middle.

For cream cheese frosting: beat together softened cream cheese and sugar of your choice (brown would be nice with this cake), adding sugar gradually until you get it as sweet as you'd like. Flavor with vanilla or whatever else you've got - we used amaretto, lemon zest would be nice too to make the cake more summery.

Ricotta Pancakes

I have recently fallen head over heels for ricotta. for some reason i used to think of it as grainy and bland, something that people used to ruin perfectly good cheesecake. but since i've started cooking with it myself, i can't get enough. after we made anadama bread a few weeks ago, i ate a toasted piece of it spread with ricotta and a fried egg every day for breakfast. this time, i decided to use up our leftovers from the pizza party to make pancakes.

these were awesome. they're really soft and sweet, but not at all goopy on the inside (a problem i've had with buttermilk pancakes). the recipe called for lemon zest, but i had none, so i just added a few squirts of lemon juice. they would've been even better really lemony, so i reccomend it. i thought these were much better without the syrup, especially if you put some fruit in them.


(Lemon) Ricotta Pancakes
Adapted from simplyrecipes.com; serves about 3

3 eggs, separated
3 tbs sugar
1 pinch salt
grated zest of 1 lemon OR 1 tbs lemon juice (or neither)
1 cup ricotta

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

Whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, salt, lemon, and ricotta. Stir in the flour and baking powder.

Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Gently fold them into the mixture.

Heat up a very small amount of oil in a pan on medium.

Scoop on your batter. it'll be thick, so you'll probably have to spread it around a little to get them thin enough to cook through. cook still they're brown on both sides (you'll have to check cause they don't bubble up in the middle like normal pancakes). test the first one - if it's mushy in the middle, stir some extra flour into the rest of the batter. continue and serve. enjoy!

Eggplant Parmesan Stack

We needed to use up our leftover mozzerella and tomato sauce from making pizza last week, and eggplant is pretty much our go-to emergency vegetable, but we decided we were too lazy to make eggplant parmesan. plus, i've always been a little bit suspicious of the strategy of breading and deep-frying the eggplant until its nice and crispy, and then immediately dumping sauce all over it and baking it until it turns back into mush. what's the point? so instead we decided to make stacks by slicing the eggplant thinner than usual, breading and frying it, then briefly placing it until the broiler with some mozz and stacking it with the cheese. the result, in my opinion, is just as comforting as eggplant parmesan, half the wait and effort, and extra-crispy-burnt-cheesy. the only thing this lacked was some fresh basil to top it off (because we are too poor to buy it).



Eggplant Parmesan Stack

1 eggplant
2 or 3 eggs
flour
breadcrumbs
mozzerella
parmesan
tomoato sauce (make it yerself! it's easy!)
fresh basil (optional but awesome)

Slice up your eggplant, maybe 1/4" or less, but not paper-thin. be careful to make them all pretty consistent in width. line a cutting board with paper towels, spread the eggplant on top, salt them pretty heavily, and cover with more paper towels. top with another cutting board and weigh it down with pots and pans or whatever else heavy you've got around. let it hang out for 1/2 hr - 1 1/2 hours, whatever works for you. press out as much moisture as possible, and brush off the extra salt. heat up a good amount of oil in a pan - you don't need to deep-fry them, but the oil needs to go half-way up their sides to get em hot enough to cook inside. Dip each slice first in flour, then in egg, then in breadcrumbs, shaking off the extra of each as you go. fry a few at a time, adjusting the heat as you go so that each side takes about 1 minute. Turn on the broiler while you fry.

Once you've got a few done, spread them out on a baking sheet, cover each with a little mozzerella, and put them under the broiler briefly. watch carefully - they go from unmelted to dark brown fast. take em out, stack em with some tomato sauce and (optionally) basil, and top with some parmesan. you're done!