A weekend treat!

I feel terrible. I have thought of writing a post for the past two weeks but every time I make something good enough to write about, I forget to take pictures. Honestly, what is wrong with me? Half the fun in writing these things is showing you the gorgeous goodness that I have just created and make you jealous enough that you have no choice but to make it yourself. And now what? I mean I can describe to you the luxurious look of the food and its beautiful bouquet… however without an image the complete allusion cannot fully be accomplished. Oh the agony! O the frustration! You know that cliché saying a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, where do you think they got that from? It’s not like it appeared out of thin air (another good cliché) or popped out of some genies lamp… NO its pure, undeniable fact! Epic failure on my part; I could just scream. ARRHHHHHH! Can you sense the anger in my rant yet?

Alright, now that that is out of the way, I can calm down. This past weekend my baby sister (I say that because my sister is 2 ½ years younger than me and 4 inches taller than me) and my mom came down to sunny Santa Barbara to visit me. Yay! It was a nice visit since I hadn’t been home since winter break and really missed my mom and Maggie too (but I have to say that otherwise she will get mad at me). The weekend was a blast full of sightseeing, good food, and good movies. We had a tasty dinner at the beautiful Café Buenos Aires. As well as an amazing Italian dinner created by my mama and me.

But the best thing we made the whole weekend was an apple cake with fresh whipped cream Maggie and I made Friday evening. Maggie and I have a great time baking together. For a quick rundown, our baking episodes usually consist of Maggie telling me what she wants to bake, she and I conversing for another 10-20 minutes about what we are going to bake, and finally me making what she wants while she supervises. Maggie decided to help this time. After a little lesson in how to dice apples, Maggie became an expert apple dicer… or at least a good source of humor in the kitchen. The cake we made came from the Taste of Home Baking Book and we made a few slight tweaks but the end result was quite delicious. For some reason the original recipe created a really stiff dough so I added a few wet ingredients. Needless to say, the cake became dessert for Friday night and breakfast for Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Apple Cake

Preheat oven to 350

3 tablespoons butter- soft

1 cup sugar

¼ cup yogurt (not in original recipe)

2 eggs (original recipe called for 1)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (original called for ½ tsp)

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

3 cups diced peeled apples

And we substituted ¼ cup raisins for the ¼ cup nuts

1. Combine dry ingrediants. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time and add vanilla. Slowly beat in dry ingredients. Finally, fold in apples and raisins (or nuts). We used a greased 9 in spring-form pan but an 8 in square baking dish would do nicely too. Bake for 35-45 minutes. And enjoy with ice cream or fresh whip cream!

And for a terrific twist on the whipped cream use honey instead of sugar and add cinnamon and nutmeg! Yum!

Enjoy! Caroline xx