Baked Apple Puff and a Cookbook Giveaway
Growing up, my brother and I were always fond of breakfast for dinner. There was something very “opposite day” about it that intrigued us like no other meal could. We almost felt like little rebels basking in a stack of pancakes dripping in syrup while our neighborhood friends sat down to spaghetti or pot roast.
At 32, I still enjoy a good omelet for dinner and even the occasional Belgian waffle, so this recipe for a Baked Apple Puff really stood out in Michelle Stern’s new cookbook, The Whole Family Cookbook.
I had the pleasure of meeting Michelle back in October at BlogHer Food in San Francisco. We were among a group of people that were left momentarily stranded at a function which led us to being smooshed into a limo like sardines while winding through the streets on San Francisco.
Being that I am extremely claustrophobic and get insanely car sick, I was about two seconds away from either breathing or vomiting (maybe both) into a paper bag before the limo came to screeching halt at the curb of our hotel.
Michelle’s passion for teaching children about fresh, wholesome food is evident throughout her entire book, which is full of unique recipes that will help you get your children involved the kitchen. Michelle provides you with great tasting recipes using accessible, fresh and local ingredients along with easy to follow, color coded, step by step instructions.
It will get you excited about dragging a stool into the kitchen and allowing your little one to crack eggs, measure flour, stir batters, and a myriad of other little-hand suitable tasks. In turn, helping out will get them excited about the food that they are helping to create!
Your kiddos are going to love this Baked Apple Puff and the many other recipes in The Whole Family Cookbook.
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I didn’t spend much time in the kitchen as a child, but one of my favorite memories is my mom baking a pineapple upside down cake in a skillet for my dad every other week. Yum!
Susan
susie.galasso@gmail.com
Making homemade bread with my Mom
I loved baking chocolate chip cookies with my Grandma Finch. Even more, I loved eating those cookies straight from the freezer. She always seemed to have an unlimited supply of cookies, stored in a big plastic ice cream tub.
Living with a single parent my dad taught me to cook. It was a fun way to catch up and spend time together. Having my own kids now I’ve been trying to find fun recipes to make together!
One of my favorite memories was making homemade applesauce with my grandmother. She had one of those old sieves with the wooden masher. Happy memory!!
I always loved eating leftover pie crust scraps from Mom’s apple rhubarb pies.
My grandparents used to live out in the country in Oregon when I was growing up, and I loved visiting them. My grandma kept a drawer of flour in her kitchen, and every time we visited, I would play in that drawer. I didn’t really cook or bake with it, but I sure enjoyed that flour and pretending like I was creating something fabulous.
My favorite childhood memory of cooking is making mushroom and garlic burgers with my dad. We still make them when I go visit home.
I loved baking cookies with my grandmother when I was little !
My Gramma and I would pick blackberries from the blackberry fields in our old back yard. Then she’d make the most delicious blackberry cobbler!! Yum! (: I remember sitting in the kitchen and rolling the pie dough!
The days before Christmas eve preparing pierogi and chrustiki with my Babci & Cioci
My favorite memory is canning cherries, peaches and applesauce with my mom- something I share with my own kids these days.
Whenever we had leftover cooked rice my mom would add it to scrambled eggs the next morning. It may sound strange, but it’s actually quite good. Your apple puffs look amazing. I can’t wait to try this recipe! Thanks.
janmessali (at) gmail.com
My favorite memory was learning to make homemade pasta with a wonderful family friend. To top it off we made an amazing alfredo sauce – yum!
Favorite memory is my grandmother’s scratch made biscuits and strawberry jam.
My grandma lived with us while I was growing up to watch my sister and I while my mom was at work. Once my sister started school, my grandma and I were alone together every day. She was a big believer in a hot meal every night for dinner, and had me help her get the meal ready to keep me entertained. My favorite “job” was mixing the meatloaf with my hands! She is the reason I love cooking (and I’ve carried on her belief about dinner every night!)
Every Thanksgiving we made decorated sugar cookies – a rainbow of colors of icing all over everything, and every kind of sprinkle and tiny candy the grocery store had to offer turned into turkeys, pilgrims, and the occasional odd whale or abstract art. It wasn’t until years later that I realized my Mom, who was the only guest who saw how often we licked our fingers while decorating, never ate the cookies. They were yummy!
My grandma cooking Sunday dinner.
My best cooking and baking memories as a kid were on the holidays.
For Christmas, my mom, sister and myself would be in the kitchen to make the extensive amount of cookies that we were convinced we needed. My mom would do the majority of the work, and my sister and I would ‘help’ by dumping in the chocolate chips, or pressing the cookie cutter into the dough and dousing it with sprinkles. The best type of helping was the tasting!
On Halloween, my mom, dad, sister and myself would carve the pumpkins, and then toast the seeds in the oven. My dad would open the pumpkin, stick his hand in and then pull out all of the innards, goo, and seeds, and gross my sister and I out with it. Then we would pick out the seeds, make sure the strands were gone, and place them on the tray. That’s when my mom took over, and as the three of us drew on and cut out a goofy looking face on the pumpkin, she would be in the kitchen making sure we didn’t burn the seeds!
Every year we would make homemade cheese danish the night before Thanksgiving and we would cook it the next morning and eat it hot while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!
Drinking “tea” (orange juice).
Your baked apple pancake photos look incredible. I didn’t really learn to bake until much later in life, so I don’t have a lot of childhood memories about cooking. The one memory I do have in the kitchen as a kid ended up in a visit to our house from the fire department. Fortunately, the only one injured was Dinner. :)
Sitting at the breakfast bar in my grandma’s kitchen watching her create many masterpieces, or so I thought! Everything from homemade biscuits to 3 layer Strawberry Cake! YUM!
My mom got mad at the sugar cookie dough while making shape cookies with me for the first time… she was so mad she had to leave the house for a while! My dad had to step in and finish the cookies :)
I used to help mom make pancakes all the time when I was little. When I was around 5 I accidentally put in too much milk (filled to the 2 cup line instead of 1) & mom said it was fine, we can just double the recipe. After this wonderful discovery of doubling the recipe, I would “accidentally” put too much of something in so that we would have to double it every time for double deliciousness. I’m pretty sure even though I thought I was doing a good job of acting, she knew what was going on.
My favorite memory has to be the look on my father and brothers face when I baked their favorite cookie…chocolate chip cookie. It was the very first thing I conquered at 8 years old and their faces made it all worth while.
Every so often my mom would let me stay up super late. We would go to the supermarket at midnight and buy the ingredients to make home made chocolate or vanilla pudding. I loved being out when most everyone else was asleep, then getting to have that special time with my mom, just the two of us making delicious home made pudding!
This easily made me think of my late grandmother who was always cooking – homemade sauce, pizza, cookies, pizzelles (sp?), chicken soup – you name it. There was always something brewing at her house. I’m smiling just thinking about it.
Saaaaame! My absolute favorite was french toast for dinner. Heaven.
My first memory of cooking was stirring a pot of creamed chipped beef (for toast) for my mother. She taught me to be patient and to slowly keep stirring, to prevent “clumps”.
Homemade donuts with my mother. So yummy! So fun!
My favorite childhood recipe is coming home from spending all day at Coney Island in Brooklyn, NY and having my mom make us root beer floats with pastrami sandwiches.
I was staying over at my aunt’s house for a week back when I was young. It was then when I had my first French toast! I loved it so much in fact that I bugged my aunt to teach me how to make it. It was the first thing I learned to cook and I have been addicted to it ever since!
My family and I would always bake cookies for “Santa” when we were younger and we all had the greatest time! We would bake sugar cookies and since we were little, we always thought the more frosting the better! When our mom checked out our decorating, she yelled “whoa! looks like Santa is gonna go into a diabetic coma!” haha. There was so much frosting! :)
My mom taught me how to bake at a fairly early age and I loved having free access to the kitchen whenever I wanted to experiment.
My Mom would occasionally make homemade apple turnovers. She would write each of our names( 10 kids!) in icing. You were lucky to be asked to help her. I wish I knew that recipe!
Making pizza with my dad! He was not much of a cook, but homeade pizza was the one dish he could do and always had my brother and I help him!
I loved the rotation we had at my house, so one night a week I was able to help prepare dinner. I liked that it was some responsibility but not too overwhelming.
My Favorite childhood memory of cooking would be going to my grandparents every Sunday for lunch and getting to cook in the kitchen with my grandmother for our very large amazing Lebanese family (there was about 40 of us every week!). It was something that I will never forget.
My favorite memories were always with my grandmother. I loved being in the kitchen with her when she was baking and making homemade jelly and jam. I remember the best part was licking the jam off the paraffin wax when we opened new jars. Ah the funny things we remember.
wow, this cookbook sounds great!
my favorite baking memories are decorating christmas cookies with my brothers and mom. my younger brother *always* hogged the nutcracker/soldier cut-outs and my older brother had a monopoly on the snowmen, but it was always one of my favorite times of the christmas season :)
My favorite memory is my Mom and I baking goodies for the Christmas holidays. There were 7 of us, and we would make a variety of cookies, three different cakes, and home made fruitcake. We would start making cookie dough in November, and bake them a week before the holiday.
Attempting to make Christmas fudge with my Mom (who hates to bake). We had many years of failure ending up with “spooning fudge” that thankfully we loved. To this day, I haven’t had the courage to make fudge.
I remember my mom canning homemade grape juice using grapes from our yard… still haven’t had better grape juice!
In early elementary school my two best friends and I tried to make an apple pie while my mom was on a business call in elementary school. We did a good job, too. The apples were peeled-ish and most slices only had a seed or two in them, but our biggest mistake was adding a glass of water to make the “syrup” that results from the mixture of apple juices and sugar. We forgot the sugar, cinnamon etc and my mom came upstairs a while later to a huge mess and three first graders trying to put a bandaid on a sliced thumb. She was mad at the time, but we laugh about it now and it is my earliest memory in the kitchen.
My favorite memory is baking, frosting, and decorating holiday cookies at grandmas house with all of my cousins.
my great grandma taught me (let me help) make her peach cobbler when i was 5 years old… to this day, it’s my favorite go-to treat! kristinmik at gmail
Baking challah with my grandmother
I made this for breakfast today and it was a great success! Thank you for posting another great recipe!!
Loved Helping my grandma Sunday lunches.