Apple Cake Possibilities

Hmm. I don't normally like apple desserts, except for tarte tatin (and I even have a Le Creuset tarte tatin pan, courtesy of my oldest friend). (And until I linked to it, I had no idea how freaking expensive it was. Oy. I need to make a hell of a lot more tarte tatins, and take him a few as well.)

But that apple cake looks tarte tatin-like, and quite yummy.

While I eat apples out of hand all the time, usually I don't like their consistency in desserts. I decided while in Paris seven years ago to try it for dessert one night, just because I was, well, in Paris. The sauteeing of the apples softened them to a luscious consistency, and though my efforts are never as pretty, they succeed tastewise. (If you manage not to burn the apples, you pretty much can't screw it up.) I'm thinking I could probably manage this.

I do wonder how she flipped it out of and back into her cast-iron pan and kept it all of a piece!

I need to use my cast iron more often. I have my mom's deep covered skillet, another skillet I may have bought, and a ridged grill pan (same as this one except, obviously, ridged). The first two aren't enameled; all of them could give you a concussion if you snuck up on me in my kitchen while I had one in hand.

Man, with these expensive French pans and my "oh, while I was in Paris" comment I sound well-to-do, pretentious, or both. I should say that was my last trip to Europe and I've only ever been to the UK otherwise. (My two other forays out of the US were one night in Windsor, Ontario and a couple of day trips over the Texas/Mexico border.) And yeah, for a time most of my disposable income went into cookware. However, I also have a bunch of pretty-darn-good pans with copper bottoms I got at Mervyn's awhile back, so there you go.

Y'know, along with wondering what the role of single, childless women is in the Church, I wonder to whom single, childless women should leave their extensive cookware collection in their wills. No one else in my family likes to cook much.

ANYway, I digress. (No, really?) I'm back to thinking about apple cake. Mmm. Perhaps this will go onto the agenda of one of my Sunday baking sessions.