In House Dining: Easy Strawberry & Apple Cake

When it comes to baking, I am innately inept, thus I tend to follow recipes more accurately. In the quest to bake a pie with fresh fruit (strawberries where everywhere several weeks ago), I stumbled upon (on the Epicurious app) a Barefoot Contessa recipe for a "Easy Cranberry & Apple Cake". I chose the recipe not only because it was clearly simple to make, but also because I am a huge fan of Ina Garden. I replaced the cranberries with strawberries and prepared a decadent cake; it was intensely sweet as the fruit had reduced into a jam-like consistency during baking.

While the cake was well received, I still aspire to bake a pie. Summer will bring me peaches- perhaps then.

Culinary Apps

Thanks to the incomparable advances of technology present today, we are at the constant disposal of innumerable tools to assist us in our day to day- all in our fingertips (literally) with the ever so popular iphones, droids and every other phone or gadget that is smart, (possibly smarter than us). One that I, as a newbie to the app world, rely on is the iphone's Epicurious app. The "cook's companion" allows you to research recipes by ingredient, cuisine, and course, among others, sourcing thousands of recipes from various sources from Bon Appetite to cookbooks such as "The Pleasures of Cooking for One".

When planning a meal, I skim through recipes searching for inspiration. I take elements from different recipes, whether it is flavor combinations, or the cooking methods I as a culinary school student should know, to create my own based on what the purpose of the dish is (a late night dinner for my chef?) and the actual ingredients I can find in this small New England town.

I will share, when possible, my inspired culinary creations.