HCB: The Bostini

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Internet, after months and months, and plenty of baking from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, and as my fellow baker, Mendy, dully noted on last week comments: “The Bostini has landed”.

This dessert has been patiently waiting in the wings for quite some time now. Even while some of the Heavenly Cake Bakers venture off the path and made it during the free choice week and gave the rest of us a small peak of what this dessert could be.

And what could it be?

Dear heaven above - THIS IS GOOD.

Ok, good is not a worthy word to describe this.  Maybe excellent? Nah, not good enough… How about first-class? Nope, does not do it justice.  Superior? Outstanding? Tremendous? Or maybe we can just call it simply brilliant.

Yep, that is it – BRILLIANT.

Because, this little cup has a whole lot to make it brilliant.

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FFwD: Marie-Helene's Apple Cake

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The apple is the most cultivated tree fruit and the most used by humans.  There are more than 7,500 known variety of apples. The United States grows 2,500 of these, but just 100 of them are grown commercially. Apples are grown in 36 U.S. states, but six states — Washington, New York, Michigan, California, Pennsylvania and Virginia — produce the vast majority.  

Want to impress your friends with your uncanny knowledge of this autumn favorite?

  • Apples float because 25 percent of their volume is air.

  • It takes nearly 40 apples to make 1 gallon of cider.

  • You could eat a different apple every day for more than 19 years, and never eat the same kind twice!

  • The “Delicious” apple variety is the most widely grown variety in the United States.

  • An apple tree has to grow for four or five years before it will produce an apple.

  • Bobbing for apples started as a Celtic New Year’s tradition to determine whom you would marry.

  • In ancient times, apples were thrown at weddings (instead of rice or birdseed, like today … ouch!).

  • The apple belongs to the rose family.

When you Google “apple recipes” you are bound to get more than 40,900,000 hits.  There are a lot of people using a lot apples out there.

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Dulce de Leche Stacked Cake

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Argentineans have a fantastic story about the origins of dulce de leche.  They claim that in a war, in their country, in the early nineteenth century, on a winter afternoon, General Lavalle and General Manuel de Rosas came together in order to make a treaty. The General Lavalle arrived very tired at the camp of General Manuel de Rosas. Manuel de Rosas wasn’t in the camp at the moment so General Lavalle entered into his tent and took a nap.

While the General Lavalle was napping a serving woman was preparing “la lechada” for the camp. “La lechada” is prepared by heating sugar and milk. The woman went to speak with the General Manuel de Rosas in his tent, but when she entered she discovered the enemy. She didn’t know about the treaty the two generals were about to make, so she ran to find soldiers.

The General Manuel de Rosas arrived moments before the soldiers, and stopped them from waking the sleeping General Lavalle. In the chaos, the woman forgot about “la lechada.”

When she remembered and checked on “la lechada,” she noticed that it had become a dark brown jelly substance. It is said that a very brave and hungry soldier tried the jelly and then dulce de leche was born. 

It’s a great story, but others claim that it dulce de leche most likely originated with the French “confiture de lait”, a confections very similar to dulce de leche that was created - coincidentally? - in the fourteenth century in a similar military culinary accident.

Who to believe?

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