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Apple, Apple, Apple Marathon! 2 Apple Breads and Apple Cake!

Thurday I did something new and decided to bake up a storm. I made 2 types of apple bread and an apple cake. Not only did I have apples I wanted to get rid of, but I thought it would be fun to try and re-create others’ recipes and to see how they go. Warning! I made many mistakes, and I’m not very good at baking. I much prefer cooking of the two!

Caramel Apple Bread

You can find the recipe here!

I didn’t have caramel sauce to make the caramel icing, nor do I keep powdered sugar on hand, so I didn’t make any icing for this bread. This recipe also took about 80 minutes to bake. The bread is a sweet loaf, but it would be every good either with the icing or with the honey butter found with the cake recipe below. This is also a very dense bread, and doesn’t crumble apart as easily as the next loaf.

Cinnamon Apple Pie Bread

You can find the recipe here!

This was an incredibly delicious recipe. The bread did take over 70 minutes to bake in my oven though. Also not very structurally sound and very crumbly, however it is a very tasty bread with lots of flavor and textures.

Cinnamon Sugar Apple Cake

You can find the recipe here!

By this point, I was pretty tired of peeling, coring, and dicing apples. I also read this simple recipe wrong and forgot to add the topping before baking, so my bad on that one! Otherwise, this recipe was straight forward and simple. I really like to format that she did for writing out the steps. Also, this was the only recipe that took as long to cook as it said it would! It was a delicious moist cake that reminded me a bit of banana/pumpkin bread while eating it. It wasn’t overly sweet, however her honey butter topping was also delicious.

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New Kitchen Faucet Installation

The faucet has always been on the top of my project list. The existing faucet leaked where the handle attached causing nutrient build up on the sink. The faucet also caused uneven water flow (hence the head attachment), and as you can see, it’s a very low faucet. I could barely fit a sheet pan or casserole dish in to clean it, and it was incredibly hard to fill up my larger stock pot. Along with that, the water fountain to the left of the sink wasn’t working when we moved in, leaking everywhere, and looking at it’s condition coming off, it probably never did work! It was an “add a line” fixture that was meant to attach to your existing lines without having to run new piping, but it’s more gimmicky than practical.

Removing the old faucet was one of the biggest challenges that came with this project. It must have been a very long time since it had last been changed because all of the bolts were rusted and seized. Also everything was very cramped with how tight our pipes are under our sink. Besides that, Josh was also trying to be very careful removing everything in case the new faucet leaked and we would have to put the old faucet back on.

The faucet we found was only $60 on amazon, and though it’s not a name brand, it was our style, and at least half the price of any similar name brand products we were seeing (all ranging from $120-$240). If you are interested, you can find it here.

This new faucet also has buttons on the head but the buttons face the other direction. Just another quirk of non-name brand. There is a button you have to press and hold that stops the water flow. There is also a rocker switch that changes the flow from standard stream to a shower/sprayer stream. The finish is also not perfect on the new faucet, but that doesn’t really matter to us all that much. We tend to care more that it functions and will hold up for a while, and this appears to do both.

Before and After comparison

What do you think? Josh and I are doing things to hopefully improve the overall house value, do you thing this may have done that even a little? Thanks again for your time and hope to see you again soon!

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Christmas Leftovers: Ham & Scalloped Potatoes

Scalloped potatoes are a little old fashioned, however it’s an easy meal that only needs the time to cook. This was the best way for us to use up the rest of our ham from Christmas, and it makes enough to serve a whole family.
I used a 2 qt dish and it was a little too full. I also used only 3 Tbsp of flour, but it would be better to use at least 4 Tbsp and waited for the sauce to get thicker before pouring it over the sliced ham and potatoes.

  1. Slice up 6 medium sized potatoes (peeled or not), and slice up one small onion (1/2 cup). Cube up the ham into 1/2″ by 1/2″ cubes. Cut about 3 cups worth.
  2. Pre-heat oven to 350 F. Layer the potatoes and ham in a 3 qt casserole dish. And in a 2 qt sauce pan, melt 4 Tbsp of butter and cook your onions til translucent.
  3. Then add 2 1/2 cups of milk, and 4 tbsp of flour. Slowly raise to a boil and cook to your desired thickness (at least an opaque sauce).
  4. Carefully pour over ham and potatoes in casserole dish. Cover and bake covered for 60 minutes. Uncover and bake another 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
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Christmas Leftovers: Ham, and Mac and Cheese

Mac & Cheese is another one of my favorite childhood foods. It is cheesy and packed with carbs. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water! My mom made a roux based sauce, that is butter and flour, then we add milk and an entire block (8 oz) of cubed white sharp cheese. The recipe below is enough for pretty much just me and my husband since I love it so much, however there is enough in the recipe to serve another person if it is paired with a protein and a veggie.
Also, some cheese brands don’t melt as evenly as others, so if your cheese tastes a bit gritty once it’s cooked, you should probably use a different brand next time. I usually use Aldi’s brand, cracker barrel brand, or Kraft. We have had Cabot work out sometimes while other times it is gritty, and Helluvagood always comes out gritty.

  1. Cook 1 1/2 cup of macaroni to al dente and drain.
  2. While that is cooking, preheat oven to 375 F. Dice 1 small onion (1/2 cup) and cook in 4 Tbsp of butter until translucent.
  3. Once onions are translucent, add 4 Tbsp of flour stir, then add 2 cups of milk. Heat to a slight simmer.
  4. While that is heating, cube one block of cheese (8 oz) by cutting the block in half the short way, then slicing into slices 1/4 inch thick. Once milk is simmering, remove milk from heat and immediately add cheese and start stirring until all cheese is melted.
  5. Place drained macaroni into a 2 quart size or bigger backing/casserole dish. Then pour the hot cheese over top and carefully stir.
  6. Bake your mac & cheese for 30 minutes until the top has begun to brown and is bubbling hot.
  7. With only 10 minutes left, slice ham and fry in a frying pan with 1 Tbsp butter. Serve together.
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Christmas Leftovers: Ham Salad

Ham salad has been one of the foods that my mom has had since she was a little girl. This was the recipe her mom and grandmother used during the great depression to make ham last a few extra meals. For this recipe, they would use their own recipe for Thousand Island pickles, however, you can also use sweet relish or sweet pickles to accomplish the same task, however I canned some Thousand Island pickles this summer, so I’ll be using those. You will also see that I am using toast. I always freeze my bread since it’s just me and my husband and we don’t want to waste food, and toasting tends to work really well in cooking/heating up the bread again.

  1. Cut ham into cubes. Approx. 4 slices cut into 1″ x 1″ cubes (1 1/2 cup)
  2. Place these into a chopper, blender, or meat grinder. For chopper/blender, pulse until all of the ham takes on the small pebbly texture, or until you’ve chopped all of the cubes.
  3. Take sweet pickles (1/2 cup) and process into a relish.
  4. Finally, Mix Ham (1 1/2 cup), Relish (1/2 cup), and Mayo (1 cup). Chill or serve immediately on bread or toast.
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