Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Baking Cakes

Last fall The Apple Cake was one of our books for school. For some reason we never made apple cake at that time (I don't remember why). Recently L re-discovered the book & it's become one of her favorite bedtime stories. She "reads" it to us almost nightly & comes quite close to quoting it word for word (& it's not a short book). Since re-discovering it, she's been asking me if we can make an apple cake & today the stars finally aligned for us to have apples AND time (sort of. Mom & Dad, when you get here tomorrow & the kitchen's a mess, you'll know why, I spent the day making apple cake w/ my kids instead of cleaning the kitchen LOL) so we made apple cake.

My observant children noted that this recipe takes ALL DAY (well, 3 1/2 hrs plus the time spent actually mixing it up (& cutting up apples) & cooling it . . . ) so the woman in the story (who spends all day getting apples, then comes home & makes the cake for her supper) couldn't have used this recipe. Smart children, dumb author/editor/publisher for not thinking of that. . . (and using a different recipe on the back of the book).

The highlight of the cake making process was when I let them help chop the apples w/ a sharp knife. I cut the apples into thin slices & then they cut some of the slices into pieces. Lots of reminders to put the knife DOWN before moving the chopped pieces to the bowl (as opposed to waving the knife dangerously close to my hands) but we survived w/o any bloodshed & they were SO proud of themselves :)

And they each had 2 pieces of cake, and L declared it the "best cake ever" (she's quite dramatic that way, I've lost count of how many "best day ever" days she's had in the last few months LOL) so I guess it was worth all the trouble LOL.

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