Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan
October 11, 2010 The amazing Dorie Greenspan, collaborator of Julia Child's and Pierre Hermé's cookbooks, has published a new book this Fall. Her latest chef-d'oeuvre, Around My French Table, features over 300 of her beloved French home cooking recipes.
This is a book that you'll need on your kitchen bookshelf. You'll use it a lot. It's actually a gigantic recipe collection from Dorie's "kitchen journal" and she provides tons of sidebar advice on serving and storage ideas, ingredient substitutions and even repurposing leftovers. I just love her "Bonne Idée" tips!
There are so many lovely food anecdotes on the origin of these recipes. If you commit to making a new recipe each day you'll have something different and utterly gourmet for nearly a year. I can't wait to try the Provençal Vegetable Soup, Basque Potato Tortilla, and the Pierre Hermé-inspired Ispahan Loaf Cake.
Here's a recipe for a simple yet satisfying apple cake, along with a fun story on how it came about. Bon appétit!
Marie-Hélène’s Apple Cake
Makes 8 servings
My friend Marie-Hélène Brunet-Lhoste is a woman who knows her way around food. She’s a top editor of the Louis Vuitton City Guides (and one of the restaurant critics for the Paris edition), so she eats at scores of restaurants every year, and she’s a terrific hostess, so she cooks at home often and with great generosity. There’s no question that she’s a great home cook, but for me, she’s the most frustrating kind of cook: she never follows a recipe (in fact, I don’t think there’s a cookbook to be found on her packed bookshelves), never takes a note about what she does, and while she’s always happy to share her cooking tips, she can never give you a real recipe — she just doesn’t know it.
I’ve watched her in her kitchen, in the hopes of nabbing a recipe by observation, but it’s impossible. Like so many really good cooks, Marie-Hélène starts off with a set of ingredients that could be annotated and recipe-ized, but, once she starts mixing, stirring, boiling, baking, or sautéing, she makes so many mid-cooking adjustments that you just have to throw up your hands and content yourself with being the lucky recipient of what she’s cooked.
And so it was with this apple cake, which is more apple than cake, rather plain but very appealing in its simplicity (the chunks of apple make a bumpy, golden top) and so satisfying that we all went back for seconds. Despite knowing that it was futile, I asked for the recipe, and, of course, Marie-Hélène didn’t really know.
“It’s got two eggs, sugar, flour, and melted butter — oh, and rum,” she said. “I mix the eggs and sugar together and then I add some flour, some butter, some flour, and some butter.” When I asked how much flour and butter, I got a genuinely apologetic shrug, and when I asked what kind of apples she used, the answer was, divers, or different kinds.
Since there were only a few major ingredients, I thought I could figure out the recipe — and I did! (Although not on the first — or second — shot.) I’ve added baking powder to the mix (and I have a feeling Marie-Hélène might have too) and a drizzle of vanilla, which you can skip if you want. What you don’t want to skip is the pleasure of having diverse apples. It’s really nice to mix up the fruit, so that you have some apples that are crisp, some soft, some sweet, and some tart.
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
4 large apples (if you can, choose 4 different kinds)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons dark rum
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously butter an 8-inch springform pan and put it on a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in small bowl.
Peel the apples, cut them in half and remove the cores. Cut the apples into 1- to 2-inch chunks.
In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk until they’re foamy. Pour in the sugar and whisk for a minute or so to blend. Whisk in the rum and vanilla. Whisk in half the flour and when it is incorporated, add half the melted butter, followed by the rest of the flour and the remaining butter, mixing gently after each addition so that you have a smooth, rather thick batter. Switch to a rubber spatula and fold in the apples, turning the fruit so that it’s coated with batter. Scrape the mix into the pan and poke it around a little with the spatula so that it’s evenish.
Slide the pan into the oven and bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top of the cake is golden brown and a knife inserted deep into the center comes out clean; the cake may pull away from the sides of the pan. Transfer to a cooling rack and let rest for 5 minutes.
Carefully run a blunt knife around the edges of the cake and remove the sides of the springform pan. (Open the springform slowly, and before it’s fully opened, make sure there aren’t any apples stuck to it.) Allow the cake to cool until it is just slightly warm or at room temperature. If you want to remove the cake from the bottom of the springform pan, wait until the cake is almost cooled, then run a long spatula between the cake and the pan, cover the top of the cake with a piece of parchment or wax paper, and invert it onto a rack. Carefully remove the bottom of the pan and turn the cake over onto a serving dish.
Serving
The cake can be served warm or at room temperature, with or without a little softly whipped, barely sweetened heavy cream or a spoonful of ice cream. Marie-Hélène served her cake with cinnamon ice cream and it was a terrific combination.
Storing
The cake will keep for about 2 days at room temperature and, according to my husband, gets more comforting with each passing day. However long you keep the cake, it’s best not to cover it — it’s too moist. Leave the cake on its plate and just press a piece of plastic wrap or wax paper against the cut surfaces.
Recipe and images re-printed with permission from Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours, By Dorie Greenspan; Copyright 2010; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Photo credit: Alan Richardson.
For editorial consideration, a review book copy was provided for this post.
Reader Comments (4)
Oooh, I bet cinnamon ice cream would be divine with this. I love fruit desserts where it IS more fruit than crust or cake. That way it really lets the fruit shine through.
Oooh, great idea! :)
I know, I love it when recipes are fruit forward. That way you really get the full flavor.
I made this wonderfully easy and flavorful cake for Christmas Dinner. It was moist and went well with my homemade cinnamon ice cream. The flavor of the apples really sings. Everyone asked for some to take home, so my 2 cakes were completely gone!! Made it again for New Year's with the same result.
Mary: So glad you had such a great success with this recipe! :)