A Tale of Two Pies, Part 2

We shall now continue our study of pies from last week. You may ask yourself "dangersecond, aren't you supposed to post on Wednesdays? Why do you always post early on Thursday morning?" There are two reasons for this, my friends. First of all, most of my friends live in the EST. I live in the PST. Also, I get off work at 8:00 PM and have a lot of things to do before I get to use the computer, such as nomming. So it ends up being late at night my time when I post. This is my explanation. Now here is an explanation of french apple pie.

If you recall, I left you last week with one completed pie and an extra pie crust. For this second pie, you will need the following ingredients:

• Five to seven apples (depending on their size)
  
• 1/4 Cup white sugar
• 1/4 Cup brown sugar
• 3/4 Cup flour
• 3/4 Teaspoon Cinnamon
• A dash of nutmeg
• 6 Tablespoons of butter

Preheat your oven to 400F.

Slice up the apples to be nice and small. I like to make them about the size of a thimble, like this:

Cut the butter into slices that are a couple of millimeters thick.

Put the apples in the pie crust in a nice, big mound (sorry, that's the only word I could think of). Then sprinkle them with the white sugar.

Mix all of the remaining ingredients together in a mixing bowl and stir them until the butter is all crumbled up.

Pour this on top of the apples.

Put your pie in the oven and bake it for 35 minutes.

The pie that will result will not have a standard "dough top", but instead a delicious crumb top similar to coffee cake. The only problem I ever have with this pie is that sometimes it becomes too juicy and I have burned myself with delicious, hot apple pie juices (man, this post is inadvertently sexual). So indulge with care.

Lovely holiday apple cake!

This cake is full of apples, coconut, and walnuts, and is so dense you could lob it at Santa and mug him for presents while he is unconscious and entering a brown-sugar-butter-sauce coma.
Okay, maybe that isn't a good idea. But hopefully laughter or outrage will make you forget the fact that I forgot my usual ingredient shot.
Regardless, I got this recipe after our annual bake sale at work. I don't know what book it came from, so if anybody recognizes it, do tell!

Step 1: Ingredients

Cake
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp brandy
2 cups sugar
2 3/4 plus 1/4 cups flour, divided
3 cups of apples, chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup coconut
1/3 cup butter

Topping
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp brandy

Step 2: Prep

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9" tube pan. Peel and chop the apples. I used one and half ginormous Granny Smiths. Mix them with the 1/4 cup of flour, nuts, and coconut. Set aside.

Lovely!

Step 3: Beat the eggs well. Add the oil, vanilla, brandy, and sugar, again beating well.

Step 4: Sift in the remaining flour, the soda, salt, and nutmeg.

If you are a little weird about your food like we at Good Noms are, you'll probably grind your cinnamon fresh. Why do this and get the nutmeg out of a shaker bottle? Here's why:

After you grind your cinnamon in your coffee grinder, your next few cups will be extra delicious, infused with a delicate cinnamon flavor. Yum!

Step 5: Fold in apple mixture.

Step 6: Pour batter (which will more resemble dough than batter) into the pan. Bake for 70 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Set the pan on a cooling rack.

Step 7: Put the sauce ingredients into a small pan over medium high heat. Boil for 2 to 3 minutes.

Step 8: Turn the cake out onto a plate large enough to catch any sauce fallout. Jab the cake with a fork so that the sauce will soak in better. Pour or spoon sauce over the cake. I suppose you could serve it warm, but that would risk losing the sauce while it is still very runny and liquid. When it's at room temperature, it it nice and thick and won't ooze off as you serve.

Naked cake

Oh my.

Delicious!