Fruit Torte - Take Two

Last week I made a fruit torte where I first put the batter in and then topped it with fruit.  As soon as it was in the oven I thought the recipe lent itself to being an upside down cake.  That's a cake where you put the fruit in the bottom of the pan and put the batter on top - hence the upside down label.

I started by rubbing some butter in the bottom of the baking pan, sprinkled some brown sugar on top of that, and then placed the fruit (in our case frozen blueberries) so that they covered most of the bottom, allowing only a bit of brown sugar to show through.  I then topped this with a bit more brown sugar.  I didn't alter the first recipe batter - I mixed it up and put it directly on top of the fruit/brown sugar layer.  It did take a bit of spooning and gentle spreading to get the fruit covered, and it certainly wasn't the smoothest of batters when I was finished ... but baking settled everything down into a more uniform top.

It doesn't look like much here - I'm sure if I'd taken the time to flip it onto a plate it would have looked much more elegant ... but it was so yummy that it just didn't last.

The last bite ...

This torte did not last more than a few days.

Dining Room Chairs - ReUpholstery Update

Just so you don't think I've forgotten.

See?  I actually pulled out the package of Ikea curtain fabric two weekends ago and washed it.  Then?  It sat on my chair by my bed for another week.  Last weekend I finally found the tools I'd been using to pull off the old seat covers (we had guests, things got moved, I couldn't find things for quite a while).  I brought them up from the basement and they sat on the dining room table for the week.  Yesterday, I moved the washed curtain fabric to the dining room.  This is progress, right?!

You can see the chair in the background, naked, without any fabric.  It's been waiting all this time to be re-covered.

I'm hoping my inertia on this project will slowly give way ... and that finally that first chair will no longer be naked.  At this rate, the seven chairs will all be re-covered by ... ah, I can't even think how long that will be.  I've got to get this thing done!

Fruit Torte

It's been awhile since I've blogged about any recipes that I've tried out.  Which isn't to say I haven't tried out any.  It's just that baking and cameras don't mix and I sometimes (often) forget to pull out the camera.  I did manage to pull out the camera to get a shot of this very yummy fruit torte before it disappeared.

I found this recipe on the Smitten Kitchen blog.  It goes by the name Purple Plum Torte.  I didn't have any plums, but we have about fifteen boxes of apples ... so I made an Apple Torte. 

Yes, Manuel picked these fifteen or so boxes of apples in late September when he went to help harvest the grapes at his parents farm.  Yes, we have been giving away a lot of apples to friends.  Yes, we have a second fridge just for this over-abundance of fruit.  Yes, I think we are crazy too ;)

The recipe is incredibly easy, so I hope you'll try it.  I expect you could use almost any fruit of your choosing.

Ingredients:

Flour - 1 cup
Baking Powder - 1 teaspoon
Salt - large pinch
Sugar 1 cup // plus 1-2 tablespoons
Unsalted Butter, softened - 1/2 cup
Eggs - 2 large
Fruit - 2 apples
Lemon Juice - 2 teaspoons
Cinnamon - 1 teaspoon

Heat oven to 350F.  Pull out a 9" spring form pan so that it's ready.

Peel, core, and slice the apples.  Place in a medium bowl.  Sprinkle the 1-2 tablespoons of sugar, followed by the cinnamon and lemon juice.  Mix with your hands to coat.  Set aside.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.  In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until fluffy and light in colour.  Add the eggs, one at a time.  Then add the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined.

Spoon the batter into the spring form pan and smooth the top.  Arrange the fruit all over the batter, pushing slightly in.  bake until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out free, about 45-50 minutes (40-45 convection oven time, with 325F).  Cool on a rack.