Last week, I received by mail a copy of Ready for Dessert by David Lebovitz. I began immediately to flag the pages (a sure sign that I may actually cook from a book) but then paused on page 90, at a recipe titled, Apple-Red Wine Tart. David, what a great idea!

I poach pears and apples in red wine and a variety of spices nearly every fall, but it never occurred to me to expand the concept into a tart. How lovely that would that be. I actually went as far as buying a bottle of inexpensive, but hopefully decent, Merlot to try the recipe when another mental pause occurred.

What if I macerated the apples in reduced apple cider, instead of wine? I knew from past cooking adventures, such as Spiced Apple Cider Caramel Sauce, that reducing and then caramelizing apple cider produces the most sublime nectar imaginable. I wondered if I could combine this idea with my Caramelized Pear & Anise Tart (not yet posted). And this superb tart is the result of all that wondering–and David’s inspiring new cookbook.

The only thing that was a bit off in my testing was the way that I sliced the apples (into 16 wedges per apple). Now, that may be customary for Tarte Tatin, but it is not the way I make the Caramelized Pear & Anise Tart. I didn’t notice the faux pas until I inverted the tart onto the serving platter and then saw that it was flat, rather than convex as I expected.

The reason for this is of course the way I cut the apples. For a more rounded finished appearance, cut the apples in quarters. The taste is the same either way, so you decide which look you prefer.

Caramelized Apple Cider Tart

This is a luscious upside-down tart, covered with a rich glaze of spiced apple cider caramel.  Because this tart is almost delicate and not-too-sweet, it works best on its own with afternoon tea or following a meal that does not include a “wow” level of herbs, spices, or chiles.

Equipment Note The success of this dish depends a great deal on the proper pan. Ideally, you should use a heavy, shallow, sloping-sided skillet with an 8-inch bottom diameter. A non-stick, heavy-duty aluminum omelet pan of this size works well. The pan should be dark in color to facilitate the browning of the caramel and have a handle that can take a 35-minute stay in a hot oven. If you aren’t sure the handle can take the heat, wrap it with damp paper towels, and enclose tightly with foil.

Timing Note You must begin this tart a day ahead.

Ingredient Note Trader Joe’s sells an excellent apple juice, which although pasteurized, contains nothing but the juice of McIntosh apples. As unpasteurized apple cider is not available in the Northwest in September, it’s a good alternative.

8 cups fresh apple cider (or bottled pure apple juice or cider with no additives of any kind; not from concentrate)
6 fresh, tart apples; peeled, cored, and quartered (about 1¾ pound before peeling and coring; about 1 pound after peeling and coring)

Quick & Easy, Flaky, All Butter, Short-Crust Pastry, rolled out to a 9-10-inch circle (remember, the pan is larger at the top), and cut with a fluted quiche pan rim.

2 tablespoons cornstarch
finely grated zest of 1 large lemon
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar

Garnish
1 cup cream, whipped and sweetened

1. In a large saucepan, simmer the apple cider until reduced by half (to 4 cups) and then remove from heat, pour into a large bowl, and let cool to room temperature.
2. After the reduced cider is cool, peel and slice the apples and add to the cider. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.
3. Remove the sliced apples from the apple cider, drain, put into a mixing bowl, and toss with cornstarch, lemon peel, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and salt.
4. In your 8-inch bottom diameter (see introduction), melt the butter and mix in 1/3 cup sugar over low heat.  Continue cooking slowly until the sugar melts.
5. Arrange apples evenly around the pan, starting from the middle and working outward.
6. The narrower ends should be pointed toward the center and the pieces should be placed curved-side down.  (Don’t worry too much about how the apples look at this point; they will hold together for you.)
7. Pour any juices remaining in the mixing bowl over the apples in the pan. There is usually about 2-4 tablespoons.
8. Cook the apples over medium heat until the sugar just begins to caramelize, about 3-5 minutes.  Don’t overdo it at this point. The caramelization process will continue in the oven.  Shake the pan occasionally to prevent the apples from sticking and burning.
9. Sprinkle the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar over the apples and carefully set the prepared pastry dough on top.  Puncture the dough in several places to allow steam to escape.
10. Bake at 375° for 35-40 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned.
11. With heavy oven mitt, remove the skillet from the oven, and swirl and shake it over high heat for a minute to loosen the caramel. Don’t forget that the handle to the pan is now extremely hot, as is the caramel! Very carefully, invert the tart onto a serving platter.
    Note The best way to do this is to place the serving platter on top of the pan and then holding both the platter and the pan tightly together, turn them over together in unison. Admittedly, this requires some wrist strength, and if you are in doubt as to whether you have the strength, do not try this. There is nothing more dangerous in the kitchen than hot caramel.
12. Serve warm with whipped cream.

Serves 2-6. (Well, MauiJim and I ate the whole thing in one evening, so I’m just sayin’.)

September is perhaps the most rewarding and enticing month of the year for Northwest cooks. Much of summer’s fruit and produce is still available, while the first of the apples, pears, and winter squash are arriving at farmers markets. Days are still delectably warm, but evenings have begun to cool. I am rustling through leaves on my evening walks through the lovely neighborhoods of Northwest Portland.

And if you love fresh-from-the-garden heirloom tomatoes, you know you need to eat all you can NOW, before the local juicy sweet crop is only a pale memory. But how to eat tomatoes every day in new and unexpected ways?

That was what I was thinking when I began to riff on a simple salad of sliced tomatoes, chopped onion and balsamic vinaigrette. It was delicious for sure but not unusual. While I was pondering the deep mysteries of the tomato and trying to call forth its inner wisdom, MauiJim happened to mention how his Mom, EllenHelen, used to serve him a salad of sliced oranges and onions with a simple vinaigrette. I was shocked.

But then I remembered that everything Ellen served was flavor-pitch-perfect. So I tried it: a whisper thin slice of sweet onion, a hefty slice of juicy orange, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and EVO, and a generous grating of smoked black pepper. ABSOLUTE HEAVEN!

The next thing I knew, there was a tomato added to the salad, then Fresh Herb Panna Cotta, then fresh sage, then an apple cider vinaigrette. The final grace note was a few tiny violas from the herb garden. I think Ellen would have liked that.

Indian Summer Tomato, Orange & Sweet Onion Salad

If there is a prettier salad in the world, I haven’t seen it. If there is a more refreshing, surprising salad in the world, I haven’t eaten it.

Fresh Herb Panna Cotta

Apple Cider Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons Lopez Island Farm Apple Cider Syrup

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 clove garlic, peeled and minced or pressed

? teaspoon fine sea salt

4 tablespoons cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil

Salad

2 medium, ripe tomatoes

2 medium, juicy oranges

1 medium Walla Walla Sweet or Vidalia onion, peeled

finely grated zest of 1 orange

small handful fresh sage leaves, slivered lengthwise

10 Calamata olives, pitted, and quartered lengthwise

black pepper in a pepper grinder

Garnish

unsprayed violas from the garden, optional

1. Prepare Fresh Herb Panna Cotta. Reserve.
2. To prepare the vinaigrette, in a glass measuring cup with a pouring spout, whisk together the apple cider syrup, vinegar, garlic, and salt. Then whisk in the olive oil to form an emulsion. Reserve.
3. To prepare the salad, using a very sharp knife, cut the tomatoes into ¼-inch slices. Save the end pieces for another use.
4. Peel the oranges, and then cut off one end so each orange sits level on the cutting board. Now, using a very sharp knife, follow the curve of the orange as you slice off the outside membrane.
5. After the membrane is completely removed, slice the oranges into ¼-inch thick slices. Save the end pieces for another use.
6. Using a mandolin cutter or very sharp knife, slice the onion as thinly as possible while still retaining the shape of each slice.
7. Around the curved edge of 2 serving plates alternate a slice of tomato, slice of onion, and slice of orange, beginning and ending with tomato. Altogether you will use 4 slices of tomato and 3 slices each of orange and onion per salad.
8. Whisk to emulsify and then drizzle Apple Cider Vinaigrette on the open plate of each salad.
9. Place an oval scoop of the Fresh Herb Panna Cotta in the center of each plate.
10. Distribute orange zest, slivered sage leaves, and olives over each salad.
11. Grind black pepper over the top, add a few violas if desired, and serve immediately.

Makes 2 salads.

I love this distinctive, unusual caramel sauce. It was included as part of the Spiced Pumpkin Sour Cream Upside-Down Coffee Cake post, but was unfortunately buried at the end. It deserves a home of its own, so that folks won’t miss it.

Spiced Apple Cider Caramel Sauce

This sauce is absolutely delicious. Imagine a dark caramel sauce with the additional flavor and acidity of tart green apples. I love it on everything in the Fall season–over vanilla bean or sweet corn gelato, with warm-spiced roasted apples, alongside pumpkin bread pudding, with beignet or ebelskiver, over delicate cottage cheese pancakes or Swedish flespannkaka (small, crepe-like pancakes with bits of rendered salt pork) , and most especially with Spiced Pumpkin Sour Cream Upside-Down Cake with Caramelized Cranberry Hazelnut Topping and Orange Cream.

6 cups apple cider (preferably no added sugar or preservatives and fresh pressed)
1 Mexican (canela) cinnamon stick, broken into pieces

½ teaspoon whole cloves
½ teaspoon whole allspice
1 whole star anise
1½ cups sugar
½ cup water
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

1. To reduce the apple cider, add cider, cinnamon, and allspice to a medium saucepan, set over brisk heat, bring to a simmer, and simmer until reduced to 1½ cups. Remove from the heat and reserve.
2. To make the caramel, combine the sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a medium saucepan and set over medium-low heat.
3. Stir constantly until the sugar dissolves and the syrup clears. To prevent crystallization, do not rush this first step; use a pastry brush dipped in cold water to wash down the sides of the saucepan.
4. When the sugar is fully dissolved, raise the heat, bring the syrup to a boil, and stop stirring. Continue heating without stirring until the syrup turns a dark amber color. An instant-read thermometer will read 340°.
5. Remove from the heat immediately and set in a larger pan of ice water to stop the cooking.
6. Back on the stovetop, with no heat, carefully stir in the apple cider, keeping your distance, as the mixture will rise up and splatter.
7. Now, over low heat, stir until the caramel and cider are blended.
8. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. If the sauce is a little too thick for your intended purpose, thin it progressively with a small amount of additional apple cider.
9. To store, refrigerate in a covered container. Reheat gently before serving.
10. Makes 2 cups.

I planned to post Friday night, so that you could have the pleasure of baking this cake over the weekend and perhaps serving to family or friends, but mea culpa, mea culpa, the texture of the cake was not responding to my tender-loving intention and attention. It was okay but not memorable. And who wants to spend a weekend morning baking a just okay cake? Not me and certainly not you. Weekends are for spectacular baking, and I wanted this cake to be just that.

Thus, Saturday morning, I was up early baking the fourth attempt, after creating a recipe grid comparing the ingredient proportions of dozens of pumpkin cake renditions from reliable sources (A Passion for Dessertsby Emily Luchetti, Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, The Pastry Queen: Royally Good Recipes from the Texas Hill Country’s Rather Sweet Bakery & Cafe by Rebecca Rather, and Baking with Julia Savor the Joys of Baking with America’s Best Bakers by Julia Child, to name a few, plus every version of “vegetable” cake, bread, and coffee cake I have ever created. (Perhaps I should mention that I have created hundreds of cake recipes over my culinary career, especially during the years that I was a freelance writer for Cooking Light Magazine and Oxmoor House Publications. For some reason, they liked to throw me the dessert assignments. Thus, the difficulty getting this particular cake right caught me by surprise.)

The texture I was aiming for is open, moist, tender and not too dense. The addition of solid pack pumpkin tends to produce a dense cake, so the amount has to be moderated to allow the pumpkin flavor to come through, without weighing down the structure of the cake. (In my early attempts, I added too much.) I started testing using oil, hoping for a fast and easy muffin-method quick bread but after tasting a couple of renditions, moved to butter and the creaming method, which is more typical for cakes. It’s hard to beat the taste of unsalted butter.

I created a version using a small amount of molasses, which was delicious, but the pumpkin flavor was obliterated, so that went into the “develop later” recipe folder. Because I began this exploration with the idea of pumpkin with sour cream, I stayed with sour cream throughout the testing, although other acidic dairy products, such as buttermilk or yogurt, should also work here. The spicing is traditional pumpkin pie-with vanilla, orange, and fresh ginger added for good measure.

I did achieve, finally, a proper balance between the flour, sugar, eggs, fat, and total liquid (including the pumpkin), in large part due to the ratios so clearly presented in Shirley Corriher’s inestimable contribution to the world of fine baking, BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes.

Thus, this cake now has a wonderful texture. As the final step, to take the flavor over the top, I added the cranberry and hazelnut topping, which is Delicious with a capitol D. You really have to make this cake. Yes. You. Soon. Make this cake.

Oh gosh, I haven’t even mentioned the Spiced Apple Cider Caramel Sauce, which now has a post of its own. I made a double batch last week and am now pouring it over everything. Don’t you just love Fall?

Spiced Pumpkin Sour Cream Upside-Down Cake with Caramelized Cranberry Hazelnut Topping and Orange Cream

A wonderfully moist, tender, open-textured coffee cake with a baked-in topping of caramelized cranberries and hazelnuts. The entire cake is redolent with warm spices, fresh ginger, and orange. This cake stays moist for days if covered tightly with plastic wrap. It is unlikely to last that long, however.

Cranberry Hazelnut Topping
1 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 cups fresh, whole cranberries (if frozen, thaw)
1 cup hazelnuts, toasted, skinned, and coarsely chopped

Pumpkin Cake
2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1½ teaspoons nutmeg
1½ teaspoons allspice
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
finely grated zest of 1 large orange
1 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
½ cup sour cream
¼ cup whole milk
½ cup unsalted butter, cool room temperature
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
½ cup sugar
2 large eggs, cool room temperature, lightly beaten
1 scant cup pumpkin puree (½ 15-ounce can)
1½ teaspoons vanilla

Accompaniments
Spiced Apple Cider Caramel Sauce
Orange Cream (recipe below)
coarsely grated zest of orange

1. Butter and lightly flour ( or spray with an oil plus flour baking spray) a 10-inch diameter, 3-inch deep, 10- to 12-cup capacity, nonstick, plain (no decorative shaping) coffee cake pan. (NordicWare makes this baking pan.)
2. Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat oven to 350°.
3. To make the topping, in a medium mixing bowl, combine the melted butter, brown sugar, cranberries and hazelnuts. Spoon into the bottom of the coffee cake pan and use a flexible spatula to distribute evenly.
4. To make the cake, in a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and salt. Whisk thoroughly for at least 30 seconds to completely distribute the leaveners. Stir in the orange zest and grated fresh ginger. Reserve.
5. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the sour cream and milk until smooth. Reserve.
6. Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the butter and sugars together at medium speed until creamy and pale, scraping the sides of the bowl several times, about 5 minutes. Add the beaten eggs a little at a time, incorporating well after each addition.
7. Add the pumpkin, a spoonful at a time, mixing briefly between additions, just to incorporate. The batter will break at this point and look curdled. Don’t worry, in this batter, it is not a problem.
8. Add the dry ingredients in 3 batches, alternating with the sour cream and milk mixture, adding the final third of the flour last. Mix for a few seconds longer to ensure that all ingredients are incorporated. Remove the paddle attachment and finish the batter by folding it several times with a large flexible spatula. The batter should now look creamy and stable.
9. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and level the top with a flexible spatula.
10. Bake in the lower third of a 350º oven for about 50 minutes, until the top springs back when lightly pressed and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean but moist. If the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan, pull the cake quickly out of the oven. Ideally, you want to pull the cake before this occurs. Over baking will cause the cake to be dry. The center temperature of the cake should read close to 210º on an instant-read thermometer and no higher.
11. Remove the cake from the oven and let cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes only.
12. While the cake is still warm, turn it upside-down onto a serving platter. If some bits of cranberry and nuts cling to the pan, simply scoop them out with a flexible spatula and add them back to the top of the cake.
13. Serve while still warm with Apple Cider Caramel Sauce, Orange Cream, and a sprinkle of orange zest.

Makes one 10-inch coffee cake; serves 8-12.

Orange Cream

2 cups very cold heavy cream
¼ cup powdered sugar
3 drops orange oil

1. Using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, add the cream, and powdered sugar to the mixing bowl and mix at medium high speed until soft peaks are formed.
2. Add the orange oils and continue mixing at a slower speed until firm peaks are just formed.
3. Remove the whipped cream to a bowl or pastry bag fitted with a flower tip and store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Makes 2 cups.
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