Yummy Diced Apple Cake!!

Oh, and it tastes divine! 

The little whitish spots are pieces of diced apples.  I bought a bag of sliced apples and then diced those babies up!  However, after baking, I was digging in...and noticed the diced apple pieces skins.  I didn't even think to peel them.  Just up and diced away!  Never dawned on me to peel.  Next time, I know to peel.

Anyway, this is another old, old recipe, maybe not quite as old as the Granny Cake, but, old, nonetheless. 

It has lots of sugar, of which I only used about 2/3rds asked for in the recipe and, of course, the apple pieces.  Then there is a little flour, baking soda (need to use just a scoche less, because of taste), cinnamon, egg and vanilla.  Whip that right up, pop it in the the oven, the smell of the baking cake is sheer heaven. 

So, I'll have to notate on the recipe, PEEL the apples before dicing!!  Other than that, it is perfect! 

Ukrainian Chicken Kiev...Not So Much

First off, I've never really HEARD of UCK (figure is out...) until I found a recipe sitting in my email.  I suscribe to an email recipe thingy, usually I ignore them.  I don't know why I have them still coming, just do.  Seems like I've tried to unsuscribe, and, for some reason, couldn't do so.

Anywho, so I spied the UCK recipe and, truly, it sounded appealing.  Chicken breasts hammered to 1/8th inch, butter and garlic for a special sauce.  A coating of flour, dried dill, a dipping in egg and then on into the bread crumbs, rolled under and fried up nice. 

First off, I didn't have any toothpicks to hold them together.  I used some sewing thread to tie them up.  Yes, I did!!  Actually, that part worked out well.  I could have sworn I had toothpicks sitting around the house, but, when I looked, they had gotten shy and disappeared. 

For UCK, you need to make a special sauce of softened butter and garlic and something else, then, you put it in the freezer to harden.  After you take it out, you cut it into pieces and put on the already floured, egged and crumbed chicken breast.  Then you roll 'em up and either toothpick 'em or tie 'em up. 

Fire up the oil in a cast iron skillet and fry those babies!!  The only problem was with them being rolled up, the outside fried just fine but the inside didn't.  The butter sauce didn't even melt. 

So, I untied them and rubbed the sauce all over the chicken breast, letting it melt into the piece.  Then fried them.

The problem with that is the coating ended up getting too cooked and carbonized.  So, it ended up uneven.  I finally put everything in the micro and nuked the suckers. 

Actually, they didn't taste badly at all.  We pulled the blackened parts off and ate the rest.  Really, it wasn't bad at all but definitely not a keeper recipe. 

I threw the recipe away.  Probably, in some way I did it wrong but I did follow to the nth degree how to do them.  In the end, though, it was too much trouble for so little reward. 

Naw....