Caramel Apple Toffee Fruit Dip

This was such a super find! Don't you love recipes like this during the busy holidays? Ridiculously simple and quick to make, unusual and with a delicious fall flavor. Our Best Bites suggested it for Halloween and put it into hollowed out baby pumpkins. They made some adorable little Halloween cookies to serve with it too. You can check it out at the link. A bit late for that (although I'm going to remember it for next year), but you could use it when you need to take a dessert someplace or when friends and family come over during the holidays. You're going to love this and good luck keeping everyone's fingers and spoons out of this when it's in the fridge.

Caramel Toffee Fruit Dip
From Our Best Bites

Ingredients:
1 8 ounce package of cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1  1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 a bag of Heath toffee bits (there is only one size, find them next to the chocolate chips)


Method:
Beat cream cheese, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg until smooth.  Stir in toffee bits.  Place in a serving bowl and serve with Granny Smith apples or fruit of your choice.  This can also be pre-made and placed back in the refrigerator, it will not stiffen up.

Check out my Christmas apron giveaway HERE.

Gourmet's 50 Women Game Changers in Food: #23, Nancy Silverton

Ms. Silverton, who admits she wasn't much of a student, dropped out of Sonoma State in her senior year. After studying at Cordon Bleu in London, she went to work at Michael’s in Santa Monica, in 1979. There she was inspired by Jimmy Brinkley, their pastry chef. “Unlike when I studied at Cordon Bleu and they said don’t be creative, Jimmy was a wild man, tasting, changing, and I saw how much flexibility there was in desserts,” she said. She learned fast. When Spago opened in 1982, Wolfgang Puck hired her as head pastry chef, but in the back of her mind, Nancy was giving a lot of thought to making great bread. 

After a brief stint at Maxwell’s Plum in New York, she returned to Spago while she and her then-husband, Mark Peel, were looking for space to open restaurant Campanile. Her mother discovered a great building for lease that was large enough to have a bakery. So La Brea Bakery opened six months before Campanile, in 1989.

To study bread baking, Ms. Silverton enrolled at Lenôtre in Paris. “I thought I’d learn some foolproof recipes,” she said. “But I don’t speak French, and I didn’t know about adapting recipes. They were all failures. I had to start from the beginning, a tablespoon of this and a teaspoon of that. It took hundreds of tries.”  Nancy immersed herself into starters, yeasts, and doughs, and quickly became L.A.'s leading lady of bread baking. 

She sold her interest in La Brea in 2001, entrusted it all to an investor and he, in turn, entrusted it all to Bernard Madoff. 
Nancy remained a consultant and worked at Campanile until 2005. She opened Pizzeria Mozza in 2007 and Osteria Mozza in 2008, before discovering she was broke. Because of Madoff, she lost everything. Fortunately, she still co-owns (with with Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich) those two restaurants, two of Los Angeles’s most popular restaurants. Silverton just published her eighth book, “The Mozza Cookbook” She guest chefs at two local restaurants (Jar and La Terza) for the sheer fun of it. 
                                             
                                                                                            ******************************

Silverton's bran muffins got rave reviews from David Lebovitz so I couldn't resist trying the recipe. They are very light, full of flavor and not as sweet as most bran muffins. I raised the oven temperature to 375 degrees on the advice of another blogger who had made these. She also suggested mounding the batter into the liners, but as you can see, I filled them too full. Overflowing is good sometimes (love those tops) and these tasty muffins are pretty much guilt-free.


Nancy Silverton's Bran Muffins
From Pastries from La Brea Bakery by Nancy Silverton

Ingredients:
2 cups wheat bran
1 cup, plus 1/2 cup dark raisins
1 cup, plus 1/2 cup water
1/2 cup buttermilk or plain low- or non-fat yogurt
a few swipes of fresh orange zest 
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 large egg white
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin (with 1/2-cup indentations) with paper liners.
Spread the wheat bran on a baking sheet and toast in the oven for six to eight minutes, stirring a few times so it cooks evenly. Let cool.
While the bran is toasting, heat 1 cup (135g) of the raisins with 1/2 cup (120ml) of the water. Simmer for ten minutes, or until the water is all absorbed. Puree the raisins in a food processor or blender until smooth.
In a large bowl, mix together the toasted bran, buttermilk or yogurt, 1 cup (250ml) water, then mix in the raisin puree, orange zest, and brown sugar.
Stir in the oil, egg and egg white.
Mix together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and sift directly into the wet ingredients. Stir until the ingredients are just combined, then mix in the remaining 1/2 cup (55g) raisins.
Spoon the batter into the muffin tins, making sure the batter is mounded slightly in each one. Because muffin tins can very in size, if your tins are larger, make fewer muffins. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the muffins feel set in the center.

Check out my Christmas apron giveaway HERE.

Join Mary from One Perfect Bite and all the other participants in this fun series.

Val - More Than Burnt Toast
Joanne - Eats Well With Others
Taryn - Have Kitchen Will Feed
Susan - The Spice Garden
Claudia - A Seasonal Cook in Turkey
Heather - girlichef
Miranda - Mangoes and Chutney
Jeanette - Healthy Living
April - Abby Sweets 
Katie - Making Michael Pollan Proud
Mary - One Perfect Bite
Viola - The Life is Good Kitchen
Sue - The View from Great Island
Kathleen Van Bruinisse - Bake Away with Me 
Kathleen - Gonna Want Seconds
Martha - Lines from Linderhof
Amy - Beloved Green
Linda - Ciao Chow Linda

Nancy - Picadillo
Mireya - My Healthy Eating Habits
Veronica - My Catholic Kitchen
Annie - Lovely Things

                              Happy Veterans Day!

Happy Veterans Day to each of you who have served our country. Thank you for your courage and dedication. And for our freedom.

Cranberry-Caramel Upside Down Cake and a Holiday Giveaway!

You'll find this such an easy cake to make for the holidays. And the color is amazing. The cake is light and the sweetness of the brown sugar offsets the tartness of the cranberries. The only suggestion I have is mentioned below in the bench note. The photo of the cake in the cookbook shows juice running down the sides. Very pretty. As you can see, mine didn't do that and it was because I took the cookbook's word for the pan size. Wrong.  But still, it tasted wonderful even if my oven was a mess!
Bench note: The minute I added the batter to the cranberries, I suspected a normal cake pan would not be deep enough, so I put some foil under the pan to catch any overflow. Unfortunately, it still spilled over. My suggestion is to use a deeper than normal cake pan. That way, the juices will remain in the bottom and when you turn it out, they will run down the sides of the cake and not all over your oven.

Cranberry-Caramel Upside Down Cake
From The Perfect Finish by Bill Yosses and Melissa Clark

Ingredients:

 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 tablespoon unsulphured molasses

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 cup sour cream

2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries

Method:

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a 9" cake pan with butter and cover the bottom with parchment paper, cut to size.

In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar, molasses, 4 tablespoons of the melted butter and 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil, stir and pour into the cake pan.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and set aside.

Beat the eggs and sour cream until well blended. Add the remaining butter and mix, scraping down the sides. Add the flour mixture and beat until smooth. 

Add the cranberries to the cake pan, making certain they are evenly distributed and cover the syrup with no gaps. Pour the batter over the cranberries, smooth out with a spatula and bake for 45 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 15, then run a thin knife around the edges and invert the pan onto a serving dish.

Now for the Holiday Giveaway!
I have a bunch of adorable Christmas aprons. Vintage. Such fun! And you can keep them for yourself or share them with friends and family for holiday or hostess gifts. Most are halves, but two are full. Here's a photo of the 10 half aprons (on the right) and the 2 fulls:

I'll pick four winners and each winner will get three aprons. They are in excellent condition, but the taffeta one has a slight pull, barely noticeable. They are vintage, after all. So leave me a comment and if you want a second chance to win,  become a follower.  I'll draw the names on November 20th. 
Be sure to leave an email address if it's not on your website! Sorry, U.S. only. :(