Apple Cobbler

I'm staying with friends in Boston right now, and they signed up for Boston Organics meaning that every Tuesday they get a box of veggies and fruit delivered that is all organic and from the Boston area, but some are from NY or as far as CA so you can get different types of stuff that normally doesn't grow in your area.

Anyway, one of the things we got this week was apples. The package also comes with some recipes that you can make with the items in the basket. I was just going to make apple pie, but my friend has the mini baking tins so we decided this was better (since the tins had never been used before).

This dish can be served warm or cold and with or without ice cream. If you want to reheat it (as I will be doing), preheat the oven to 350F/175C again and then heat the bowls for 5-10 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 4 apples, peeled, cored and cut into large pieces
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp apple pie seasoning (you can leave this out if you don't have it, the original recipe didn't call for this or cinnamon, but I figure it always makes it better)
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
2) Toss apples, sugar, salt, cinnamon and apple pie seasoning together.







3) Divide equally among 4 individual oven proof bowls.









4) Combine butter and flour with fingertips until mixture has the texture of oatmeal (I used the same bowl without washing it out).
5) Add brown sugar and mix in a bit, allowing for the mixture to be lumpy.





6) Distribute evenly over apples.









7) Bake for 30 minutes. I placed them on one tray so putting them in and taking them out would be easy.

Sweet & Sour Stir Fry

Budget Bytes was right, this is super quick when you don't have a lot of time to cook...or you had a really late lunch and just moved to a new place and thus don't have any food and need to get something quick at the store before it's too late. I made a few changes based on what we had around (i.e. no corn starch, so I left out the water too, as the corn starch would thicken and reduce the water).

Ingredients:

• Frozen stir fry vegetables (I just found a package that I liked, because there were none labeled 'stir fry' at the Stop and Shop by me) (contained broccoli, carrots and red and orange peppers)
• 1 TBSP vegetable oil
• 1 TBSP garlic powder (I really like garlic...)
• 2 TBSP brown sugar
• 1 TBSP ketchup
• 1 TBSP soy sauce
• 1/2 TBSP rice vinegar
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger

Directions:
1) Combine the brown sugar though the ginger adding a bit of vegetable oil (I used 1 extra TBSP) to make it smooth.
2) Place the vegetable oil and garlic powder in a pan and warm.






3) Add the frozen vegetables and saute until warmed though.







4) Add the sauce to the hot pan and allow it to come to a simmer so you're sure the sauce is warm through too.
5) Serve with rice or on it's own (a friend was making rice but it was not done in time and I used a scoop of rice to eat my leftover sauce with).

Banana Bread

Taken from here

Ingredients:

• 2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
• 1/3 cup + 2 TBSP butter, softened, plus more for greasing
• 1 ½ cup wholemeal self-raising flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ¾ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 ½ cup mashed banana (about 3 bananas)
• ½ cup almonds
• 1/2 cup chocolate chunks
• 1 tsp brown sugar 
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon powder

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 180⁰C/160⁰C fan forced. 

2) Grease 14 cm x 21 cm loaf pan. Grease the other two sides with butter.

3) Add the lemon rind into a small bowl with the softened butter.

 

 

 

 

 

4) Sift flour and cinnamon into a large bowl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5) Add rind, butter, sugar and eggs to the cinnamon-flour mix and combine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6) Stir in banana, almonds and chocolate.

7) Spread mixture into pan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8) Meanwhile, mix the brown sugar and grounded cinnamon to make the topping. Sprinkle over the bread mixture in the pan.

9) Bake for about 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. 

10) Stand bread in pan 5 minutes before turning onto wire rack to cool.

 Pac Man