Bittman, Baking, and The Best Dishes

Today, I bring you three recipes tried and news of some fun to come.

The first recipe is for "Autumn Millet Bake," the sound of which is something quite atrocious, but turned out pretty well, even with my typical tweaking tendency. I first saw the recipe at Heidi's site here, and was inspired to try something with millet: how pioneer-like! how quaint! how self-reliant! (You see how I like to get carried away with evocation)

Here were my changes:

• scaled it down by half
• used cooked squash
• didn't have sage
• added roasted corn kernels
• didn't use nuts
• added different seasoning (a disadvantage of losing my notes on this one is I can't remember which)

I don't think I managed to fully cook the millet, and I'm not sure why, but it was quite crunchy, and quite tart from the (frozen-fresh) cranberries. I had it in the morning as a whole-foods pick-me-up at work and it worked out well, providing about 4 servings (so I gather they were estimating for hungrier people in the original recipe!).

It certainly looked pretty with the colors that pop, and satisfied the belly, being made with plain foods and low in fat. If and when I try this recipe again, I would stick closer to the original and maybe cook it longer so that the cranberries had more of a chance to stew.

This next one has only one picture, because it wasn't very photogenic and it wasn't very flavorful. Strike Two (bringing the count to 1 and 2) for the Traditional Scottish Recipes book I bought in Scotland.

Third and final recipe: Italian Apple Cake, from FrenchieTBD, which stands for The Best Dishes in the title of this post. As far as I can tell, it is a defunct blog, and I often find a broken link, but some industrious fishing gets me back to the actual site and recipes. I really liked the writer's style of posting a life anecdote with a dish, so I'm bummed that she hasn't posted in a year, but what can you do: life goes on- thank goodness!

I brought this one for coworkers, and boy, was it good! Moist, as the photo shows, good browning, rich and airy crumb, and with the intoxicating scent of rum mixed in with the fresh, local apples. Ah, life is good.

And now for the news to come: I am excited to participate in the Food Blogger's Cookie Swap 2011!

I haven't decided yet what type of cookie to bake for my compatriots in the Food Blogging World, but I want it to be good! And I'd rather make an assortment of 2 or 3 types to mitigate the risk of disappointing, but we have been instructed to only use one recipe... so I guess I'll look over my recipients' blogs to see what they like!
Try this cake. You won't be disappointed.