The subject for the Daily Photo Shoot for Wednesday, 13 February 2013 is:

Don't Judge a Cake by it's Cover

In preparation for Valentine's Day, since I don't get out to the shops myself, I lay awake last night thinking of something I could do, or make, for my Valentine, Paul. I had visions of a heart-shaped cake (I know I've got a heart-shaped cake pan somewhere....) with red or pink in the decor of the cake somewhere, but I couldn't quite pin it down to anything solid.

It kept me tossing and turning all night long. What could I make with the ingredients I alreadyb have here in the house?

So once the morning was in progress, Paul took off to go down to the boat to see how things were after the Blizzard, I set about looking up an appropriate thing to make, and I knew I wanted it to have "cake" in its title.

I found it right away. An Apple Spice Cake, the recipe and photo of which are here at Mel's Kitchen Cafe.

To make a long story short and to get to the Photo Shoot part of this entry, here is my version of this cake when it came out of the oven and after which I tried taking it out/upside down on the plate, which failed.




I occasionally have recipes fail on me, and here is one of them.

But hold the phone a minute! Did it, indeed, really fail?



Not so bad, eh?



No, not a total failure. I did what I was told to do, I greased the pan (although I did use a bundt pan rather than a 9x13" pan), and I didn't have "cake flour" either so generally did the substitution technique by adding a tad less All Purpose Flour and some cornstarch. I cooked it longer than was called for, also, because I was using one large bundt pan and I wanted to be sure it cooked through.

So all that said, it smelled devine whilst cooking. At about 45 minutes, I took it out and probably didn't wait quite long enough to turn it upside down onto a plate. It didn't all come out!!! I put it back and tried to patch it (as in Photo #1 above) but darn it all... my Valentine's cake was kind of sad looking.

Paul came home and looked at it and seemed pleased. We are not waiting for tomorrow to have some either. Valentine's Day will come early for us...like after supper!

Then I tried again to knock that thing out of the pan onto the plate, and part of it stayed behind again. It is very very moist on the inside but the toothpick came out perfectly clean... go figure!

There was a lot of the cake left on the middle portion of the pan, and Paul came along just then and picked off the remaining pieces, just to test it out.



Paul the Taste Tester General of Crow Cottage.

He said "It's great!" and that was all I had to hear. My Valentine loved the cake.

Forget any kind of icing/frosting. I took a tiny piece myself and yes, very moist and very tasty, nice and spicy.

Now I have to say I altered the recipe at Mel's slightly. I used Vita Coco Coconut Water with Pineapple instead of the Schnapps, I substituted the flour like I said above, and since we only had 2 apples left here but did have 2 bosc pears, I used 2 apples and one pear cut up into chunks instead of the 3 apples it called for.

So there you have it. Our Valentine's dessert, not so pretty looking but tasty as all get-out. Next time I might make it in a square baking dish, etc.

Now I have to figure out what to make us for supper. I'd forgotten all about that little item!

Cheers and Happy Valentine's Day to all my lovely Friends here!

Bex & Valentines, 2-footed and 4-footed alike







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Some of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard are:

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson singing "One More Year"



and "The Quiet Life":



and also "The Making of "Wreck & Ruin" (this is a very good informative video of this couple:)

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