Apple Walnut Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

I'm back! Thanks so much everyone for the good wishes for our vacation. We had a really good time relaxing, watching the nightly shows, exploring the Alaskan cities, and I have a new addiction to slot machines (since I now understand the way the buttons work haha).

The Hubbard Glacier, which looks small but we're just a distance from it in this photo.

And we ate way too much. There was a buffet and one restaurant, where we ate dinner almost every night. But buffets are seriously dangerous. You don't wait to eat until you're hungry, you wait to eat until there's room in your stomach. So while I can't wait to see what you guys have all been up to and what you've been cooking, I've been a little wary of looking at lots of food photos right now. I'm sure I'll get over it soon though! It was nice not having to cook, but I'm happy to be back to my regular food.

Our cruise ship with the tender boat. I had no idea what tendering meant before!

Anyway, sorry to be so mean and withhold the cake recipe from you! So here it is. The cake has diced apples, walnuts apple liqueur and cinnamon. The icing has homemade caramel (so addictive), cream cheese and butter. Uh can an icing get any better than that? I halved the recipe and unfortunately forgot to half the amount of caramel in the frosting so my frosting was way more liquidy than it was supposed to be, but delicious nonetheless! My family and I really enjoyed this cake and I'll definitely make it again.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Tres Leches Cake
Maple Walnut Cake
Brown Sugar Apple Cheesecake
Applesauce Spice Bars

Apple Walnut Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

Makes 1 two layer 9 inch cake

Note: The caramel needs time to cool completely so it would be best to make it the day before.

Caramel
Makes 1 3/4 cup (you will have about 1/2 cup leftover)

1/2 cup cold water
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup heavy cream, at room temperature

Cake
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
3 cups (3 large) golden delicious apples, cut into 1/4" pieces
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
3 tbsp apple liqueur or apple brandy

Frosting
1 pound (2 eight ounce packages) cream cheese, softened slightly, cut into pieces
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened slightly, cut into pieces
1 cup cold caramel

Garnish
Caramel
Walnuts

To make caramel:
In a small saucepan, combine the water and sugar. Set over medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves (about 3 minutes), making sure no sugar is sticking to sides of pan. Increase heat to high and boil without stirring, until the syrup becomes a deep amber colour, about 15 minutes. To prevent the syrup from becoming grainy, use a pastry brush dipped into cold water to brush down any sugar crystals sticking to the sides of the pan. Swirl the pan occasionally for even browning.

Once the syrup turns deep amber in colour, immediately remove from heat. Slowly and carefully add the cream to the syrup (mixture will bubble vigorously), whisking constantly, until cream is incorporated.

Return the pan to medium-low heat, stirring until sauce is smooth, about 1 minute.

Remove from heat and allow to come to room temperature before refrigerating. Can be stored for up to one month in refrigerator.

To make cake:
Preheat oven to 325F. Grease two 9x2 inch round cake pans, then line the bottoms with waxed paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the oil with the sugar until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until light, about 1 or 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients in thirds, beating after each addition until smooth. The batter will be extremely thick and dough like. Fold in the apples, walnuts, and apple liqueur until just blended. Divide the batter between the prepared pans and bake for 45-55 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Let cakes cool in pans for 10 minutes. Remove from pans and cool completely on wire rack.

To make icing:
In the bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the cream cheese and the butter until smooth, about 3 minutes. Gradually add the caramel and beat until well incorporated.

To put the cake together:
When cake has cooled, ice between the layers, then ice top and sides of cake. Drizzle remaining caramel over top of cake. Garnish with walnuts.

Vacation Time!

We're leaving today on a one week Alaskan cruise today and I can't wait!! I've always wanted to go on a cruise and specifically an Alaskan one (I've never been a beach person). My plan was to post about this apple walnut cake with caramel cream cheese icing before we left but I ran out of time. So I will leave you guys with a photo and promise to post the recipe when I come back. Hope you all have a good week!

Mango Salsa

My attempt at making the plate look nice! Look how the salsa is draped over the dry burger. ;)

I've tried out a few vegetarian burger recipes, but never seem to have much luck, except for these mushroom pecan burgers which are so flavourful, moist and tasty. My burgers always seem to be too dry or too crumbly or not flavourful enough. I guess the other problem is that I either bake them (which dries them out too much it seems) or pan fry them with a minimal amount of oil (which is never enough oil to do a good job). So it could very well be me that is the problem and not the recipes! I've saved tons of burger recipes but only rarely feel inspired to try them.

Anyway, so I tried out the Anaheim black bean burgers from the Rebar cookbook, with high hopes as Rebar is one of my absolute favourite cookbooks. The burgers didn't turn out so well, but the mango salsa that they suggested pairing it with was amazing. And that most delicious mango salsa is what I'm sharing with you today. Fresh salsa is one of my very favourite things to eat (so it's actually surprising that I never make it - I guess I'm scared of messing it up even though I know it's so simple).

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Roasted Red Pepper and Almond Hummus
Beet Raita
Olive Tapenade
Grape Tomato Salsa

Mango Salsa
Adapted from Rebar

2 mangoes, finely diced
1/4 red pepper, finely diced
1/4 red onion, finely diced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp chopped cilantro

Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl, mix together and season with salt. Serve immediately or refrigerate to serve later.

Morning Glory Muffins + Sweet Harvest Muffins

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I get quite tired of "sweet" muffins and scones. What I mean by "sweet" are things like fruit muffins or scones, or things with chocolate. They're okay sometimes but I usually lean towards the savoury side. However, these morning glory muffins are SO good, moist and flavourful that I would be happy to eat them all the time. I love that they're so packed full of stuff, and you can use up whatever you have (which was the reason I went searching for a recipe like this actually - to help use my wheat germ and Costco sized bag of apricots). I did make efforts to make this muffin recipe healthier than the original, though in this case I don't think you can tell.

Speaking of muffins that are more sweet than savoury (oops I had it the other way around before), I also love these sweet harvest muffins from Ricki's cookbook Sweet Freedom. I can't share the recipe with you but can tell you that they're really delicious and soft, and each muffin gives you a serving of vegetables! I'll definitely be making them again.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Spiced Carrot Muffins
Banana Crunch Muffins
Grandma Jennie's Date and Nut Bread
Garden Harvest Cake

Morning Glory Muffins
Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Note: The original recipe calls for 2/3 cup vegetable oil and 1/4 cup orange juice. What I did was kind of complicated/weird but it worked for me. I reduced the vegetable oil to 1/3 cup, and added in some extra juice to result in using 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp juice. Leave it as it was in the original recipe if you don't mind the amount of oil.

3/4 cup dried apricot, chopped (or any other dried fruit)
2 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups (7 ounces) carrots, peeled and grated
1 large tart apple, peeled, cored, and grated
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup wheat germ
3 large eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp mango juice (all we had was mango juice, but the original recipe uses orange)

Preheat the oven to 375F. Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin, or line it with papers.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, spices, and salt. Stir in the carrots, apple, coconut, nuts, and wheat germ. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and juice. Add to the flour mixture, and stir until evenly moistened. Stir in the dried apricots. Divide the batter among the prepared pans.

Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, until nicely domed and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes in their pan on a rack, then turn out of pans to finish cooling.

Blueberry White Chocolate Swirls with Lemon Glaze

I made these for a blogger recipe contest that BC Blueberries is hosting. And I made them just in time, as the deadline is tonight at 11:59ET! One of my favourite baked goods (and well, food in general) is cinnamon rolls, so I thought I'd try to make some variation on cinnamon rolls using blueberries.

I didn't use any spices, and instead have some vanilla in the dough, blueberries and white chocolate rolled up, and then it's all topped with a lemon glaze. These are definitely addictive and I'll have to give them away so I don't eat them all! We have some really amazing blueberries in BC and I need to get out to a local farm to buy a big box of them.

Edit: I forgot to mention how easy these are to make! No yeast, so no waiting for the dough to rise and no kneading. They're really quick to come together.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Blackberry Whole Wheat Scones
Blackberry Orange Tea Scones
Braided Lemon Bread
Plum Sour Cream Kuchen

Blueberry White Chocolate Swirls with Lemon Glaze

Makes 9 rolls

2 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup blueberries, washed and patted dry (or 1 cup frozen blueberries)
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter an 8"x8" square pan.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl combine milk, oil and vanilla. Add the wet mixture to the dry, and stir just until the flour disappears and you have a nice dough.

Lightly flour a work surface. Roll out the dough to a 9"x14" rectangle. Sprinkle the white chocolate chips and blueberries, and gently press them into the dough. Starting from the long side, roll up the dough into a log. Cut it into 9 biscuits and place them in the prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown.

Meanwhile, prepare the lemon glaze by mixing together the lemon juice and icing sugar.

Once the rolls are done, invert them onto a plate, and drizzle the glaze over top. Serve while warm, but also good at room temperature.