Saturday, October 13, 2012

Apples and Pumpkins

Summer is officially over here.  The leaves are turning, the mornings are decidedly cool and dark and we broke down last week and had to kick the heat on for a few especially cold nights.  And now we are making plans for halloween and thinking about the coming holiday season and shuffling summer clothes into storage and digging out the winter garb.

Halloween is going to be fun this year.  The small fry is two and she is infinitely more interested in carving pumpkins, dressing up and (last, but certainly not least) candy.

It's fun too see the whole family get enthusiastic about holidays again with these little people to share them with.  This summer my mom planted half  a dozen pumpkin seeds in her herb garden.  In short order it became a pumpkin garden.  We spent a weekend at the farm a bit ago and the kiddos spent some time scouting ripe pumpkins and ordering my dad to cut and pass them out into the lawn. They are perfect, just waiting for funky faces to be carved into them.  We brought home seven of them and I think the total crop will yield around 30.  And all from a little envelope with half a dozen seeds in it.  How fun!

Halloween, here we come.

We're going to wait a week or so to cut into these beauties.  Their shelf life is seriously shortened once their carved.  And I've been successful to date from keeping our voracious city squirrels from chewing holes in them.

In the meantime, I have done a little fall baking and  I wanted to share the recipe.  It's got to be the world's most simple and unpretentious cake recipe and it's perfect for fall.  It was given to me by a friend, and I don't know the original source, but it's probably one of those tried and true recipe that is eons old.  I hope you enjoy it.


Fresh Apple Cake

4 cups apples, peeled, cored and diced
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup oil

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Spread (the fairly thick) batter evenly into an ungreased 13" x 9" pan.  Bake at 350° for 45-55 minutes.

Happy fall, friends.

1 comment:

  1. This recipe looks delicious! I'll let you know how the gluten free version tastes ;-)

    ReplyDelete