Seasonal Baking continues!

Apple Coffee Cake with Crumble Topping and Brown Sugar Glaze

I decided to up the ante just a little bit this week and take advantage of the apples that are in season. I love coffee cake and today's recipe was a pleasant surprise when I found it on foodnetwork.com.
So here are the ingredients:

Cake:
1 stick plus 2 teaspoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups peeled, cored and chopped apples

Crumble Topping:
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Brown Sugar Glaze:
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons water

Whoo! Three different things to prepare, I started feeling the pressure when I read through the recipe and it told me I would be "folding the apples into the batter." How in the world do you fold an apple? Apparently, its a way of mixing the apples into the batter and not something you do to the apple, itself. I had to ask what it was and I was glad I did. Otherwise, I probably would have had apple chunks in the shapes of paper cranes and airplanes in my batter.

I encountered crises within the first ten minutes of preparation when I sliced my hand with the knife, skinning the apples. OUCH!

Despite the pain, I decided to press on and ended up putting my coffee cake batter in the oven shortly after. After waiting 45 minutes, this is what came out:

There's a little bit of my blood there on the left, but nothing major. I loved the cake overall and want to eat it all. As you can see, my food critic really liked it too.
I love baking. Deserts are yummy and this one is my favorite so far. I'd give it a 4 out of six. It would have been a 5, but since I added a bit of myself, literally to this recipe, I had to mark off.

A bit of seasonal baking...

So, finally, I decide to try to bake something, Pumpkin Loaf. Apparently its an "easy" recipe, according to Kraft. Easy is such a relative word. In my mind, this pumpkin loaf was going to be like making grilled cheese. Let's compare:
Grilled Cheese Ingredients:

2 pieces of bread
1 tbsp. of butter
1 piece of cheese

Pumpkin Loaf:

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar, divided

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

4 egg whites, divided

1/2 cup fat-free milk

1/4 cup canola oil

2 cups flour

2-1/2 tsp. CALUMET Baking Powder

2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1/4 tsp. salt

1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Neufchatel Cheese, 1/3 Less Fat than Cream Cheese, softened

Now, maybe its just me, but this pumpkin loaf looks a crap ton harder than grilled cheese. Needless to say it was. In all actuality, the hardest part of this recipe was waiting an hour and five minutes while it was in the stove. In my impatience, I think I took it out to early. Here's what it looked like:



I was pretty impressed when I took it out of the oven. After waiting 10 minutes for it to cool, I opened it up and saw that it was still a little moist. The cream cheese filling wasn't as good as I thought it'd be. I went back to the web page and saw that some of the reviews of the recipe gave alternate cream cheese filling recipes, but oh well, maybe next time. Overall the loaf was all right. I'm more happy that I did it. Maybe I'll try again without the cream cheese and put chocolate chips in their instead, we'll see. I give it an oustanding 3 out of 6 or a 2.5 out of 5 if you prefer.

Ok, ok I just had a little more of the loaf since it is thoroughly cooled now and it is delicious! mmmmmm. 5 out of 6

C.T.