In what I hope to make an ongoing series, I’ve decided to start posting recipes from a database that I’ve been building up for about 8 months now. I intend for them to be recipes that I’ve found to work well and taste good, but I may occasionally post some that I haven’t had a chance to try, but look really good, so that someone else who is in more of a position to try it can do so (For example; entrees such as chili, or side dishes like potato gratin are things that I don’t often get a chance to try, since our meals are already planned out).

So, to start this off, here is a recipe for a bundt cake that I’ve made several times. It’s a spice cake, with a caramel glaze that could easily be made on its own without the cake and used as an ice cream topping or something. That’s an idea I had last time I made it, anyway. And in case it looks familiar to anyone, I pulled it out of the February 2007 issue of Bon Appetit.

 

Apple Spice Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

12 servings

Cake:

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

3 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¾ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

1 ¾ pounds apple, peeled, cored, coarsely grated

1 ½ cups unsalted butter, room temperature

1 ½ cups sugar

½ cup (packed) brown sugar

1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Glaze:

½ cup (packed) brown sugar

¼ cup unsalted butter

¼ cup whipping cream

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice

¼ teaspoon salt

 

For Cake: Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 325 degrees. Spray 12-cup Bundt pan with nonstick spray. Sift flour and next 6 ingredients into medium bowl. Drain grated apples in strainer. Using hands or kitchen towel, squeeze out excess liquid from apples. Measure 2 cups grated apples.

Using electric mixer, beat butter, both sugars, and lemon peel in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Mix in vanilla and lemon juice. Beat in flour mixture. Mix in grated apples. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool in pan on rack 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare glaze: Stir all ingredients in small nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium; whisk until glaze is smooth, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Invert cake onto rack set over baking sheet. Using small skewer, pierce holes all over top of warm cake. Pour glaze over top, allowing it to be absorbed before adding more. Cool cake 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

EDIT: One tip for making bundt cakes. Whenever I make a bundt cake, no matter what the directions say, I always grease and flour the bundt pan to make sure that whatever is in there is gonna come out when it’s done baking. One thing about bundt pans is that over time, for one reason or another, the nonstick coating on the inside of the pan will come off, and even just a little patch not being there can cause the cake to stick to the inside and rip it apart as it’s coming out of the pan. It’s a bit of a hassle, but giving the pan a light coating of Crisco or something and then dusting over it with flour will create a fantastic nonstick surface and will allow the cake to pop out with little or no hassle.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been working at the Brueggar’s Bagels at the corner of University and East Hennepin since last July. I’ve come to like it well enough; there aren’t a whole lot of people who work there, so I was able to get to know everyone pretty well, and got along with them well too. A couple weeks ago, Jeremiah, one of the guys in the division here, told me that there was an opening at the Purple Onion, a coffee shop/restaurant that he’s been working at for the past year. After thinking about it and discussing it with Harold, I decided to go in and apply. I talked to the owner for a while, who said he was looking for someone in the kitchen, but he wanted to think about it a little bit more. Then, he called me the next day to tell me that he wanted to hire me. So anyway, I started today. The store is busy, the job is kinda fun, and there’s a ton to do. I get to work with Jeremiah, and sometimes TJ. Not much more about that I can say right now. I guess if there IS much more to say, or if I find out that people are jonesin’ for more info on my new job, I’ll write about it in more detail later.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve rearranged my blogroll, gotten rid of some old stuff and added some new stuff. Here’s a couple of the new things:

1. Balsbaugh7 and Ithilien Exile, are two that I’ve found to be quite fascinating. They are both written and managed by Jon Balsbaugh, a former teacher of mine and fellow brother in community. Knowing that he writes both of them, and figuring out what each story represents makes it a delight to realize the different crossovers and make the connections that he sometimes sets up between the two. Through both of these, it really paints a brilliant picture of how Jon sees the world.

2. Good News Film Reviews is a site that I stumbled across not too long ago. It’s run by a guy named Scott Nehring, and while I don’t always agree with what he says theologically, I find it refreshing to find an outwardly Christian guy who seems to appreciate film as much as I do, and doesn’t like the soft, sometimes weak stance that a lot of mainstream Christian society has taken towards decidedly “mainstream” films. For example: “I won’t let my 10 year old see the Star Wars Episode 1 cause that guy in it has devil horns.” Lame.

3. Jeff Gerstmann, Brian Ekberg, Rich Gallup, Ryan Davis. All of these guys work, or at one time worked, at Gamespot.com, a video game news and editorial review site hosted by CNet.com. I could probably write multiple long, tedious posts on what these guys and others at Gamespot have meant to me over the last couple years, but I’m not gonna do that, cause that would be dumb. Suffice it to say that if you get those four guys in a room together, and just have them talk to each other about video games, or music, or food or whatever, it’ll be super funny, kinda weird, and perhaps even informative as well.

In fact, they used to get together every week, along with other Gamespot editors, and put out a video game news podcast called “The Hot Spot”, which I used to listen to religiously. I would explain why I don’t anymore, but I don’t want to devote all the time and space to rehashing old news, so I’ll just let the articles speak for themselves.

4. The Hater. A regular contributor of The Onion A.V. Club, Amelie Gillette’s blog serves as my only window into the weird world of pop culture. Sometimes funny, usually kind of interesting, and incredibly cynical, The Hater appears to be the only outlet covering pop culture who’s coverage doesn’t amount to, “These Hollywood movie stars sure are kooky, but we still love them, (and have to keep paying attention to their every move) don’t we?”

“No, we don’t. They’re all idiots,” says Amelie.

If you ever played any game that had the word “Sim” in it (I know that me and another guy were way into SimCity 2000 back in the day), you may or may not know that those games were all made by the same person. His name is Will Wright, and he has been the mastermind behind Maxis, the developer of everything Sim related, since he founded it in 1989. Wright and Maxis have been known for a long time to put out games that are consistently fun, reach an almost spectacularly wide audience, and are for the most part, family friendly. Their latest venture seems poised to do much of the same thing, but also takes the concept of controlling and managing a virtual world further beyond any territory that the company has touched on before.

is the name of it.

It has been in development since 2004, and while development videos like the one below have been shown a lot over the course of the game’s development, it was not until yesterday that Electronic Arts — which aquired Maxis in 1997 — announced the release date, which is September 7th of this year. Supposedly it was originally called “SimEverything”, and with good reason. The basic premise is that you, the player, go from controlling a single-celled organism in a 2D gene pool, to moving around the evolved creature in the ocean, finding food and whatnot, to bringing him out of the ocean, establishing a tribe, building cities, defending yourself against enemies that you may encounter over time, building an empire, and eventually exploring space, and encountering other civilizations built up by other players of the game. While there’s a lot that is yet unrevealed about the different game mechanics, management of resources and universe overlap, to name a couple examples, it sounds great, not to mention quite innovative for a video game, but I suppose that’s what Will Wright has made his career on.

Here’s a video from GDC (Game Developers’ Conference) 2005 in which Will Wright narrates as he takes the audience through the different stages of the game. It’s 36 minutes long, so don’t watch it if you aren’t interested, but I thought it was really cool.

Huh….that’s weird. Looks like it froze up.

*Click* *Beep*

Maybe that’ll work better now.

Pretty much sums up what this site has been to me since last summer. Don’t worry if you don’t get it, just know that I’m gonna try to start posting some things semi-regularly, usually about totally random stuff that some, but not always everyone, will find interesting.