Homemade Apple Cake

Apple cake is one of my favorite things to bake. I actually haven't made one in several years, though. When DH and I were dating, I made apple cakes all the time. It was my specialty, I guess. Back then, I used these tiny, really tart apples that grew on my mama's tree (crab apples, I think they're called). Somehow over the years, I lost my recipe. :( And then I kinda forgot that apple cakes are awesome.

Until last weekend! DH gets a ton of fruit from a local farmer, and he brought home quite the haul of these tart, large green apples recently (not Granny Smith, though). They're not the best just for eating, but I thought they'd be good for cooking.

I'm not sure what came over me on Saturday. I felt horrible from my allergies. I mean, really horrible. But I made myself get up and get some chores done that morning, so I could spend the rest of the day resting. Before lunch, I got the urge to bake something. Maybe I thought it would make me feel better? ha. Anyway, I searched through all our cookbooks until I found a recipe for an apple cake that sounded good.

This recipe came from a Tri County Cook Book (its out local power company co-op):

Apple Walnut Cake
1 1/2 c vegetable oil                    1 tsp. baking soda
3 eggs                                           2 tsp cinnamon 
2 c sugar                                       1/2 tsp. salt
3 c flour                                        1 c black walnuts, chopped        3 c apples, diced

Combine oil, eggs, and vanilla. In separate bowl, sift together sugar, flour, baking soda, and cinnamon. Add this mixture to the first mixture. Fold in nuts and apples. Batter will be very thick. Pour in tube pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. Let cool approximately 5 minutes before removing from pan. Serve warm, topped with whipped cream, if desired.

We all know that Nikki can't just follow a recipe. I don't make my own up, but I do alter recipes all the time (every time, in fact). In this instance, I hate walnuts (or any kind of nut in my cake!), so obviously they would be left out. I also added some nutmeg, though I didn't measure. I would guess I added maybe a 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of nutmeg.

Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. I baked the cake in a bundt pan, since I don't have a tube pan (but its close enough). Actually, I used my Pampered Chef Stoneware Fluted Pan. I've had that thing for probably 5 years, and never had a successful cake come out of it. They always stick the sides terribly. So I wasn't expecting good results this time, either.

I was pleasantly surprised, though! I guess spraying the heck out of it with Pam did the trick (usually, I coat the pan with vegetable oil, since that's what's recommended). At any rate, my cake came out looking absolutely perfect:

And boy, was it GOOD! I left my apple pieces fairly large, since I really like to be able to taste them. And I put more than 3 cups in there. If I'm gonna have apple cake, I'm gonna have APPLE cake! Everyone loved it. My mama even said it was the best apple cake she'd ever have, and that's saying somethin.

I was worried about it when I put it into the oven. The batter was SUPER thick. I know the recipe said that, but I wasn't prepared for just how thick it was. It was like a dough almost. But as you can see, it rose beautifully, and was nicely moist. I think some butter melted over the top would have made it even better (and I plan on trying that next time - just placing small chunks of butter randomly around the top before putting it into the oven).

Stay tuned, cause this weekend I plan on trying a smoothie recipe. I keep hearing about smoothies and how quick and easy they are for breakfasts, so tomorrow I'm gonna try one. I want to see if its really that easy, and if it keeps me full until lunch. Happy weekend, everyone!

Good Weekend

Not much to report here. Which is actually good, cause it means I haven't been running around like a chicken with its head cut off like I normally am (and who came up with that expression anyway?? Its awful!).

We did have a somewhat busy weekend. Well, really just yesterday was busy. Saturday, not much happened, thankfully. Me and C slept in, which was heavenly. After breakfast, DH came and picked her up and they spent a few hours together. (That sounds like we're separated, doesn't it? Nope. He's just gone usually on Saturdays - working. This weekend he was feeding a friend's animals, so C went with him to do that Saturday, and then they just hung out at his business together.) Meantime, I got some cleaning done at the house. Much-needed cleaning, trust me! When DH and C got home, it was time for C's nap, but of course she wouldn't go to sleep. I did spend an hour laying down with her trying, though. Not that I minded the trying; I was doped up on Benadryl all day, so I welcomed the rest! (Yep, I got a little sunburned on my neck after our beach day, so I've had a bit of an allergic reaction. Nothing terrible though, thankfully.)

It was super hot and humid Saturday. So much so that I didn't want to be outside at all. Around 5 I did take C to my mother-in-law's house to go swimming. That was fun. My child is like a fish in the water! Whoever invented arm floaties, I salute you. Though I wonder if they'll make it harder for her to learn hold herself up in the water without them...?

And that was our day. We had a super simple supper (thanks, Hamburger Helper), and C was asleep by 8:30 (thanks, no nap!). Of course, she didn't stay asleep that early. :/ I put her in the crib and she woke back up, so I ended up rocking her until 11pm - yawn. While I was doing that, DH was in the kitchen cutting up fruit.

We helped DH's mother host a baby shower yesterday for DH's brother and his wife. They're expecting a boy in September. I love my MIL so I wanted to help as much as possible. And DH is all about helping his mama, which I think is so sweet. Plus, both of us absolutely love stuff like this. People are always telling us we should go into the catering business. We'd love to, actually.

When DH's brother got married, we took over the bridal shower. My MIL is not good at stuff like that, so she just took directions from us. We went a little overboard, but I have to say we laid out an impressive spread. I have some catering background; growing up, my parents owned 2 restaurants, so I was a waitress for years and years. My dad also did some catering on the side, and I liked to go help him. I guess DH just naturally has the talent, cause he doesn't have any professional experience. He's good, though.  ( :

One of DH's cousins got married last fall, and she actually wanted us to do the food for her wedding. We almost took the job, but in the end decided it would be too stressful, since we would have to miss the actual wedding, and C was the flower girl so that wasn't happening!

So when my MIL asked for our help with this baby shower, we of course said yes. We were mainly in charge of fruit, but we organized and arranged/decorated everything. I wasn't able to help much with the cutting of the fruit, since I was stuck in the rocking chair for hours and hours. Once we got to the church yesterday, I set about arranging the food table, deciding what should go where, and which bowl/platter should be for what food. DH was busy making an adorable baby carriage out of a watermelon, and a beautiful fruit platter (which I had to help him with, haha - he doesn't quite have the eye that I do for stuff like that!). I was really proud of how it all turned out:

Terrible picture, really doesn't do any of it justice. But I just grabbed my iPhone and snapped a quick shot. And that's the only picture I took all day yesterday. Before people started showing up for the shower, I was too busy running around making sure everything was like I wanted it (I'm sure that was annoying to some people, but oh well, haha), and then once people arrived I was busy talking and making sure none of the food or punch ran out. After the shower was over, we all pitched in and had the church cleaned up pretty quickly. That's the worst part of doing stuff like this. I should have taken a picture of my kitchen table! DH and I supplied most of the serving dishes and platters, so when we got home we piled everything up on the table. And its still sitting there. We were just too tired to deal with it last night. Guess that's my project for tonight...yay.

Normally, events like these leave us pretty stressed out, which means tempers are flaring and we end up mad at each other. Yesterday was just fun, though. I don't know why, but this really brought me and DH closer together and we just laughed and joked with each other all day. Once the shower started, DH stayed in the kitchen so he could be ready to mix up more punch quickly, so I kept sneaking back there to see him and steal kisses - it felt like we were dating again. ( :

So yeah, I'd definitely say we had a good weekend. We need more like this! Well, not more showers to do for family, since we spent so much money on it. We don't have anything planned for this week or next weekend. I'm hoping for a relaxing week, and maybe I can convince DH to spend Saturday at the beach or something. ( :

OBX - Part 1

We just got back from a 3-day trip to the Outer Banks of NC. Not many people knew we were leaving, mostly because we're so worried that someone will know we're gone and break into our house or somethin. You never know in this day and age, sadly. But it was also kinda neat to be gone for 3 days and have few people know where we were. Our parents knew, my best friend knew, our bosses/coworkers knew, and some of DH's customers knew, but that's it. In fact, another friend of mine texted me Friday and asked if I had lunch plans. I texted back that I did - we were eating lunch in Manteo! hehe

This was kind of a last-minute trip. We normally take a vacation in February to celebrate our anniversary, but there were some family things going on during that month, so we postponed our trip. And then every month the weekends were just too full of commitments for us to go anywhere. Finally, maybe 2 weeks ago, we decided to pick a weekend in June and just go. As it turned out, I got an invitation to a baby shower just a few days after we set the date for our trip, but our minds were made up by that point.

We didn't book a hotel room until last Monday (just 4 days before we needed a place to stay), so the pickings were slim. We knew we wanted to stay on Roanoke Island or maybe Nags Head, but neither of us had ever been to that area before. I spent hours last Sunday night researching places to stay and things to do in that area. We got lucky and were able to book a room at The Elizabethan Inn in Manteo. Way more expensive than we like to pay for a hotel room, but we didn't have a choice. Everything else in the area was booked, and our only option was staying an hour or so away in Plymouth, and we didn't want to have to drive an hour every day just to see what we wanted to see.

C in her "cage" at the hotel, haha

The hotel was pretty nice. We've definitely stayed in worse before. As long as a place is clean, I don't really care about much else. In our room, I felt comfortable walking around barefoot, which says a lot for me. It was in a nice location - in Manteo, but not in the busiest part of the town (though this weekend there were surprisingly few tourists there), and only a few minutes' drive away from everything we wanted to see. I'd stay there again.

In fact, I can't wait to go back to Roanoke Island again. I had no idea we'd enjoy staying in NC so much. We normally go to Charleston, SC, on our trips (or the mountains of NC and TN in the fall with DH's family). There were so many things to see once we got there! We definitely didn't see everything. Three things we know we want to do next time: see The Lost Colony drama and spend more time at Fort Raleigh, go on a dolphin watching boat tour, and go on a wild horse tour. And next time we want to drive down the OBX to Cape Hatteras. We almost did that this weekend, but its a long drive down Highway 12 (with a 2.5 year old), so we decided not to.

I plan to break this into several posts, so this doesn't get too long. I don't want to forget the little details of our trip, like I normally do. I have the worst memory ever. This will be a kind of general post, then I'll do separate posts for different things we did. 

The drive up to Roanoke Island was a little more stressful than we'd hoped. We missed a turn somewhere and ended up going way out of our way. Luckily, with the help of several maps and my best friend, we were able to get on the right track again. We also had to make several pit stops so C could potty. The trip should have taken us 3.5 hours. We pulled out of our driveway at 8:30 Friday morning and arrived at Manteo after noon. Oh well. We were just happy to be there safe and sound.

We carried a ton of snacks with us, as we always do. One thing is for sure, we will NEVER be hungry on a trip! I made an attempt to be healthy by buying apples, grapes, bananas, apple sauce, diced peaches, almonds, and peanuts. But it was hard to eat the "good" stuff when DH had provided us with so many yummier things - like Sweet Tarts, chips, chocolate....haha. Sadly, the apple sauce and peaches didn't even get opened. Oh well, on vacation you're supposed to eat whatever you want, right? ( :

Speaking of food, we ate some good meals this weekend, too. There is a restaurant in the hotel we stayed at, La Dolce Vita Manteo, where had delicious lasagna and chicken Parmesan. There was a lady playing the piano while we were there, so it felt really fancy, though it wasn't at all. Oh, and they served Italian bread with oil for dipping - yum!

Both Saturday and Sunday morning we ate at the same restaurant in Nags Head - Grits Grill. We just happened to stumble across it Saturday morning while we were driving around starving. It was packed, so we figured it must be good. We did have to wait a few minutes for a table, but it was well worth the wait. DH and I are both big breakfast eaters - we could probably eat breakfast 3 times a day. So we loved the huge plates of pancakes, bacon, eggs, grits, and toast. Simple, but oh-so-good!

Saturday for lunch we ate at the Nags Head Pier Restaurant. It was pretty good. We had to wait forever for someone to take our order, though. I think they forgot about us. DH had a basket of shrimp, C got some mac n' cheese, and I had a plate of fried trout. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a table with a view. It would have been cool to watch the ocean while we ate.

Saturday night we just went to Applebee's at Nags Head. I'm not sure why we decided to go there, when we can eat there any time back home, but it was good. I love their Fiesta Chicken. The restaurant was under staffed that night so it was a little stressful, but at least the food was good.

Yesterday on the way home we decided we weren't going to cook supper, so we stopped to pick up some Bojangles chicken. I feel so sorry for people who live in states or countries where Bojangles don't exist. Seriously. Sorry, folks. You're really missing out, and if you ever come down South, Bojangles is a must.

I guess this post has turned into a food post. That's okay. Food is important on vacation. Am I right??

I seriously feel like I need some sort of detox after everything I've ingested over the past 3 days. I only drank water, so that's good, but I just feel so bleh. I'm not used to eating so much junk! Well worth it, though. And yes, I'll do it again come October, when we take our annual trip with DH's family.

Stay tuned for more details on the trip! ( :