Don’t be surprised it wasn’t served with ice cream. See, I need to shed a couple of pounds here – I am trying to squeeze into this party dress by the end of the month. So, the dish is basically my diet food – less fat, more vitamins. If you are favoring traditional views you can top the crumble with a scoop of vanilla or orange ice cream. But the yogurt actually turned out pretty tasty, and it was good with the crumble, as well as on its own.

Does anybody else think that food blogging has an inevitable weight-gaining side-effect?

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Farmers’ markets smell like apples. It’s impossible not to buy some when you are there. What’s more difficult is to resist the temptation of buying more apples than you actually need – happens to me all the time…

The strudel is one of my favorite ways to utilize these fruits. I stuff the strudel generously with finely chopped (never grated and squeezed) apples, kirsch-soaked raisins, crushed gingersnaps, and sugar. Some chopped toasted pecans or walnuts would be a nice addition to the filling if you are lucky and none of your family members suffer from nut allergies. I never leave all the filling juices behind, but spoon them over the apples. I like my filling succulent and caramelly, soft but yet with some texture present in the apples and not dry and gummy with barely recognizable ingredients. The sauce itself is also quite memorable. If you want you can make a sour cream sauce as well (for color contrast) and plate the strudel. But we ended up by pouring more cranberry sauce over the slices, anyway; the tiny pretty dots were not enough.

The recipe is adapted from the “Bon Appétit”.

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And here’s another cookie. I hope you are not tired of them. Christmas is not too far, and I’ve been trying new and revising old favorite recipes preparing to a big give-away baking. So far, there are about two dozens recipes more to go. Don’t be afraid, I’ll dilute the cookie posts with something else :)

I think this cookie idea comes originally from Martha Stewart (but I can be wrong… I’ve got the old hand-written recipe copied from somewhere a long time ago). Anyway, I made them before and didn’t like the dough much – it was unpleasant to work with and I didn’t like the taste the following day. So, this is a new and improved version of mine :) Honestly, the cookies turned out better. I made them quite big (about 3-inch); you can form smaller cookies if you prefer, but adjust the filling accordingly.

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