Today is my Birthday! Nothing goes better with a birthday than cake and ice-cream! I didn’t want to do the usual cake and ice-cream, there has to be a story behind the recipes I collect and so I chose to show you an Apple Cake and Butterscotch Bananas with Ice-cream, YUM!
The Apple Cake I was shown by an old lady at a harvest festival. They were making fresh flour and I stood by amazed at the site of these old machines grinding away. The festival also had everything set up pre-1900s so most of the farming equipment was done with pulley’s and horses. After I was given a bag of fresh wheat flour the lady I had been standing next to handed me a bag of fresh wheat flour and gave me the recipe for Apple Cake; we were talking about Apple pies and how I’d never made an apple cake before. I went home and immediately set to work with this bag of fresh flour and the difference was heavenly. I now go to watch the old machines every year and I look for the lady, but I haven’t seen her since. One day I hope to thank her for such a wonderful gift.
The Butterscotch Bananas with Ice-cream I learned from a self made chef that had a gorgeous studio apartment in one of the highest apartment towers in Seattle. He was one of my very first friends that I’d made when I was lost out there in the city. He made me this amazing ice-cream dish just days before my birthday (that I had to figure out on my own later) and afterward we went up to the roof-top where there was a party going on and I had seen the lights of Seattle spread out before me. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever gotten to witness. When I get homesick for the city I left behind I close my eyes and remember that moment when the music was playing, the sweetness of dessert still lovingly lingered and the whole wide world seemed to embrace me.
- 1 1/4 Cups Flour
- 1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
- 1 Cup Sugar
- 3/4 Cup Brown Sugar – Packed
- 1tbls Cinnamon
- 2tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 3/4 Cup Cooking Oil
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 3 Eggs
- 2 Cups of Apples – Finely Chopped
- 1 Cup of Chopped Pecans or Walnuts
Preheat the oven to 350′. Generously grease and flour a 10 inch bundt cake pan and set aside. In a mixing bowl combine the flours, sugars, cinnamon, baking powder / soda and salt. Add the Oil, Vanilla and the Eggs last and beat until well mixed. Once it is mixed well, add the chopped apples and nuts. Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared bundt pan and place the cake in the oven. Bake for 45 min or until you can cleanly prick and remove a fork. Let the cake cool for 5 minutes and invert onto a wire rack.
To make a nice sugar glaze for the top you can mix together 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, 1/4 tsp of vanilla and 2 tsp of milk. Drizzle onto the cake to make one delightfully sweet topping.
- 1 stick of unsalted butter
- 1 cup of brown sugar
- 1/4 tsp of cinnamon
- 6 bananas, sliced diagonally
- 1/4 cup of dark rum
- Vanilla Ice Cream
Melt the butter into a skillet over med-high heat. Add sugar and cinnamon and whisk every so often until smooth, roughly 5 min. Gently stir in the bananas, remove from the heat and add the rum. Using a match and being very careful (VERY CAREFUL) set it on fire and wait until the flame goes out. Serve over vanilla ice-cream.