Cozy fall foods 🍂

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! Cozy on up this week to some apple cake. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.

Apple and honey cake

Recipe via Smitten Kitchen

I was an hour late to brunch because I woke up on Saturday morning at 10 am utterly convinced that I should make this cake, and that it would take me no more than an hour. I was wrong, but also so so right, because this is the best fall cake (and would be my favorite cake for all seasons, if apples were in season year-round). It doesn’t require any fancy ingredients, just butter, flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, apples, and honey. The batter comes together easily and quickly, and bakes up into my platonic idea of a yellow cake, moist and eggy with a strong honey flavor. I skipped the honey glaze because I don’t fux with perfection. The only thing that’s a pain is peeling and preparing the apples; schedule in an extra 45 minutes for that part, and you’ll be right on time for all your commitments. And if you’re not? My friend told me that I was worth the wait when I brought him a slice of this cake. 

Nescafe latte at my kitchen

Why not your kitchen, too?

The problem with me quitting coffee is that I never stopped loving coffee. I only noted that it was causing me mental and digestive distress, and that I was happier living a life free of both of those things. But when you still love something — how it tastes, the way it temporarily makes you feel, the ritual and culture around it — sooner or later, you will return to it. In a city of single-origin, six-dollar artisan pour-overs, I have a soft spot for the taste of Nescafe instant coffee. It also has a fascinating physical property that makes it whip up foamy and thick.* My perfect morning cup is a heaping teaspoon of Nescafé followed by six ounces of boiling water, frothed with a blendy stick. For the cherry on top of the pie, aka the foam on top of the latte, heat a half cup of unsweetened organic soymilk for 30 seconds in the microwave. Take it out, whip it with the frother, and slowly pour on top. Enjoy.

*Careful readers and longtime subscribers will recognize that I’ve linked this link before, but it bears ample repeating.

Butter & salt gelato at L’Albero dei Gelati

341 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215

Making a butter flavored gelato — a substance that’s already composed of cream and sugar and eggs — sounds like overkill, but I should have never doubted L’Albero dei Gelati, which can do no wrong. How a dessert that tastes like salted butter manages to be perfectly subtle is beyond me, but it is. The gelato has a perfectly creamy and smooth texture, with nary a speck on its off-white surface. It’s extremely rich, but doesn’t taste greasy or overly fatty at all. I’m actually not sure how L’Albero infuses the cream with such a buttery taste (it’s not brown butter — there are no burnt bits left behind), so I’ve decided to settle on pure magic.

Caramel buckwheat financier at Bien Cuit

120 Smith St, Brooklyn, NY 11201, via a friend (◕‿◕✿)

This isn’t the cake you’re expecting it is, which is a very good thing. For one, although it bears the name of “financier,” it’s not the traditional gold-bar, rectangular shape. Instead, it looks like a tiny bundt cake, with a dome and ridges, which gives more texture to the pastry (a good thing).  And to my relief, the caramel part of this pastry is extremely subtle, and not the dreaded (and overdone, overly-sweet) salted caramel (another good thing). It’s mixed throughout the batter, giving it a browned-butter taste. The whole thing is salty, rich, moist and crumbly; it tastes almost cheesy, even though (I very much hope) there’s no cheese inside. Too hard to imagine? You’re going to have to try it for yourself, at one of the Bien Cuit locations.

Instant pot chicken pho at my kitchen

From Serious Eats.com

I came to this recipe out of necessity, and a speck of desperation. See, I was starting to get a little too close with my favorite Vietnamese takeout place. After the third night in a row I showed up right before closing for a takeout order of chicken pho, no utensils, please, I looked up and saw the friendly cashier (who is actually Chinese, although we mutually agree to never acknowledge it) looking down at me with a tiny pinch of pity in his eyes, this tired looking small woman who clearly has no one to eat with and no time to cook. And that single, small gesture of empathy was enough for me to run home and lug out my Instant Pot, because, as a friend pointed out to me recently, “sounds like you’re not really comfortable being vulnerable.” Damn straight! Anyways, make this recipe, it is cheap, easy, and quick, and allows you to avoid human interaction. It doesn’t taste like takeout, but if you add enough extra fish sauce, you’ll have something salty and warming for cold fall nights. Oh yeah, and emotions are good, see a therapist if you can afford it, all that good stuff.

Have a cozy weekend,

Soph