Take One Apple . . .

Yeppers, that's all it takes -- just one apple to make two of those little mini-cakes. You don't even have to peel the apple if you don't want to (I didn't.) but you do need to grate it up. Or you could use some of that zucchini that seems to be everywhere this time of year -- or a couple of carrots or whatever. Just so you get about a cup of juicy grated stuff. I found the recipe on the Taste of Home web site but I've messed with it a bit so I'll show you what I did here and you can click on the link to see what the author of the original recipe did, okay?

Before we get to the recipe, I need to mention something about eggs. I never did buy into the booga-booga stuff about cholesterol and eggs. Sure, they have cholesterol but, as was pointed out in Prevention magazine way back in the '70s, they also have plenty of lecithin, which emulsifies the cholesterol and fat. Also, the eggs have more of the good cholesterol than the bad . . . and dietary cholesterol is no longer considered such a culprit anyway. Here's a pretty good short article on the subject. I mention this to explain why I added the yolk to the lemon sauce even though it wasn't mentioned in the original recipe. That said, everybody's body works different so you have to march to your drummer, not mine.

Okay, here we go with the little cutie-pie apple cakes with lemon sauce. The batter will be divided up between a couple of small ramekins -- I used two 12-ounce Pyrex dishes that worked fine. I think one could probably even make about 4 cupcakes with this amount of batter.

MINI-APPLE CAKES

2 tablespoons shortening or butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg white
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup shredded apple
1/4 cup chopped pecans
Mix fat and sugar together until crumbly. Add egg white and vanilla and mix well. Add dry ingredients and mix well again. Batter will be very stiff. Fold in apple and nuts. The moisture in the shredded apple will loosen up the batter a little. Spoon into greased 8- or 10-ounce baking containers. Bake at 325 degrees fairy height for 30 minutes.

If you compare pictures, you see my cake came out a darker brown than the other one. I think that's because I baked mine in the countertop roasting oven and it took twice as long because there is no way the little oven can maintain the kind of heat you get in the big one. No problem. The cakes were just right when I took them out. Nice and moist and nummy. And here's the lemon sauce, which takes only a couple or three minutes in the microwave:

QUICKIE LEMON SAUCE

3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, cold, cubed

Mix sugar, corn starch and lemon juice together and microwave on high for 1 minute. Whisk, then add a couple spoonfuls of the lemon mixture to the egg yolk and whisk it in to temper the egg. Then whisk the egg mixture back into the lemon mixture and microwave for another minute. Add the little cubes of cold butter and whisk until the butter is melted. If the sauce looks thick enough then, you're done. If not, another minute won't hurt.

In the photo above, you can see the sauce got thicker as it cooled. When I get ready to eat that cake, I'll slip the sauce in the microwave for maybe 30 seconds to make it a bit easier to pour over the cake. Nom, nom, nom!

And it only took one apple . . .

Why We Have Comfort Food

Okay. That's done. Now . . . what shall I eat next?

Hooboy. This child is full to the brim. I just polished off the last portion of yesterday's Pratchett Pot meal. That brought my total meals from one cooking session to four. (Count 'em, folks -- 4.) Not too shabby for a mere 2-quart pot. Especially since I added about a quarter-cup of crumbled feta cheese to the last serving just before I nuked it. The flavor explosion was fantastic. I will make a note and remember to use feta the next time I cook something like that.

I forgot to add this until later so some of you may have missed the link to Elizabeth Yarnell's web site. You can click over to here, or maybe even better, here, where you'll find all kinds of articles and recipes and there is a really good FAQ page that answers a lot of questions.

One thing you'll notice is that she pushes the Le Creuset brand of Dutch oven. While I'll agree that it's one of the top quality brands of cookware, it's also one of the more expensive. Sure, it will perform beautifully for a lifetime but you know what? After you reach a certain age, when folks try to sell you something based on "lifetime guarantee," you don't know whether to snort or laugh. There are other high-quality brands of cast iron cookware, both plain and enamel-clad, and you don't have to mortgage your first-born to swing the financing. I noticed KitchenAid has come out with both a 3 1/2 quart and a 4 1/2 quart size in a very spiffy enamel-clad dandy and the price isn't too horribly horrendous. I'm lusting a bit there but I can keep it under control as long as my Pratchett Pot continues to serve me.

Oh! If any of you decide to get the book (Glorious One-Pot Meals), Amazon has -- I think -- the best price. Be sure you get the 2009 edition, which is upgraded from my 2005 version to the tune of 60 more recipes. That's double what I've got. Sheesh.

I shouldn't be surprised. That's just one example of the Gotcha Syndrome, of which I am often the hapless victim. You know how that goes . . . you shop carefully all over the place to get the very best deal and the day after you've committed your hard-earned, the darned thang goes on sale. Or what you bought is discontinued and you will never be able to get replacement parts. Or, as with the cookbook, the new model is better and has the audacity to cost less. That kind of "gotcha."

And that, Coffee Mates, is why we have Comfort Food.