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You might have seen this apple cake on this blog before - I have been making it for years and it’s one of my favourite cakes ever. So easy to make too!

I made another cake yesterday (actually two, I always double up the recipe as it goes fast in our house) so I thought I would take some photos and give you the recipe.

I don’t normally start this way, but Emma keeps eating a little bit of an apple and then leaving the remains on the kitchen bench so I gathered a few up over two days and naturally thought of my apple cakes. I got what I could from these apples plus I chopped up a couple more new apples for good measure.

Remember I double the recipe so I needed 4 apples. I will give the recipe for one cake here, you can double it for two cakes if you like.

APPLE CAKE

2 chopped, peeled apples

4 oz (1/2 stick) butter  (125gm)
1 cup sugar

1 beaten egg

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Peel and chop apples and then add sugar.

Melt butter, add beaten egg. Mix into sugar/apples.

Sift in flour, baking soda and spices.

Stir just enough to mix.

Put in the oven for 50-60 minutes at 180 C (350 F).

Dust with icing sugar when cool.

Enjoy! Feel free to link to this recipe and if you make it, let me know what you think. Isn’t it just the yummiest cake?

How good does this roast chicken look?

I am not an expert on roasts but I thought it was time I got confident with them so I cooked this the other night. Roasts are so yummy and so great for this freezing weather we are having right now.

I was hoping to surprise my husband (who is himself a really good cook, dammit) but in the end, I had to ring him at his work to find out the secret to the potatoes. The secret (you might already know this - it came via my mum actually) is that after peeling and chopping, you parboil the potatoes/sweet potato/pumpkin and then empty the water out, drizzle with some olive oil and then add a shake of herbs (I used an Italian herb mix) thenyou put the saucepan lid back on give them a really good shake. Then put them into the roasting tray with the meat. The shaking in the saucepan makes the soft (parboiled) potatoes/sweet potato/pumpkin all rough and this helps them crisp up once they are back in the oven.

While I was impatiently waiting for the roast to cook, I decided to make some dessert too.

Apple and berry pie with lattice pastry and a cute little birdie. It was so good with lots of cream. Am I making you hungry yet?

Oh, and here I am wearing the wonderful-I-love-them grey pants and longline cardigan that I thrifted the other day. I think that both of these are already becoming firm favourites.

If you are wondering why I am looking a little pained in the photo above, it is the combined effect of trying to suck my tummy in for the photo and trying not to wince as Jack (6) waves the digital camera around in preparation for our photoshoot. Once he settles down from the excitement, he is a good photo-taker actually. It’s fun modelling for a six year old!

I couldn’t think up a good title for today’s post so “hello again” it is. No post yesterday because I fell asleep on the lounge at about 10pm. Right in the middle of watching Numbers so now I don’t know how it ended. Oh well. When I woke up I actually thought about doing that day’s blog post for about 2 seconds before realising that was silly and taking the better option - snuggling into bed. Very early for me, but I must have needed it.

I did some fabric piecing today. I didn’t really have an exact idea of how these were going to turn out (I still don’t) but it was fun, and lovely to see all the different prints working together.

It has been a little hard to get much done, with Jackie-boy home from school with Chicken Pox, but hopefully I will get some time tomorrow to make these into something. I am thinking apron pockets, cushion covers or bags. Not sure - I will think on it a bit more.

Yesterday Jack, Emma and I made two of our yummy apple cakes - one for my brother’s birthday and one for us to have here. Of course the one for my brother was eaten up by everyone at the family birthday dinner last night and when we got home, Paul and Jack (who couldn’t go because of the POX and my toddler neice Grace not having had them yet) had eaten a fair whack of the second cake. Jack and I polished off the rest today. Oops.

On a side note, I can’t believe I didn’t take a photo of yesterday’s cakes. I know, how silly is that? I love to blog about what I am doing though, even if certain people (my husband and sister!!!) think it is a bit dorky. What do they know? Anyway, I looked and looked for the photo - not on the camera, hmmm maybe I put it in the photos folder, okay not there, maybe it’s in this other folder, oh not there either, maybe in this folder over here. On and on until I realised that OH MY GOD! I didn’t take a photo of the cake!!! How could this be?

Back to the story: So Jack and I thought we had better make up for eating all the apple cake today, and we made a Banana Cake this afternoon. So much baking - it is fun! Even with little helpers.

Sam (almost 15) has enjoyed cooking for the family a bit here and there recently. He has even asked for a regular night where he will cook every week. YAY! He usually has to clean up the dishes after Paul or I cook, so when he cooks he LOVES that we have to clean up. Tonight, he is making Sausage Rolls and he even let Jack help which was nice.

Sometimes Sam’s cooking experiments attempts end up a little wonky - partly due to the Asperger’s (problems with following directions in order and processing info) and partly due to general teenage pigheadedness (”I KNOW how to do it!”) - but he is getting a lot more confident and learning some of the little tricks and shortcuts. Despite thinking he knows it all and ignoring our help, he is taking our suggestions in, even if he acts like it was his idea.

So fun to see the teenage things happening and remember your own self as a teenager! I love seeing it from this other perspective, as a parent. So much fun.
And of course, I love being able to sit here blogging while I listen to the cooking going on in the kitchen. Maybe that’s the best part of all.

One of Emma’s absolute favourite things right now is a dress I made for her about 2 years ago. It was miles too big then but with the addition of a tie in the back she was able to wear it when her dad and I got married in 2005. We’ve been together for 11 years but took a while to get married - this is our second (and perfect!) marriage for both us. Anyway, the good thing about making something for your kids that is too big is that they can get a lot of wear out of it!

It doesn’t matter to her that it is no longer Summer, or even Spring. In fact, it will be Winter here in about a week but she still wants to wear this dress! She wears it with stockings or jeans or track pants, and with a jacket over the top or a “warm toppie” underneath.

She wore it again today with another stripy top underneath and her dark purple pants with pink rick rack.

Luckily for her I have got loads of this beautiful fabric left (I bought a stack of it back when I was making kid’s clothes only) and so I think next year she can have a new dress - I’m sure this one will be too small by next Summer. Maybe it can go to her little cousin Grace next.

Here is another favourite thing. Yesterday I made Rhubarb and Apple Crumble and it was so good.  We had it with ice cream and thickened cream. Those are slivered almonds on top of the crumble - they give a really yummy and crunchy flavour.