Cinnamon Apple Cake

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If you have a Pinterest account and are remotely interested in food, you've probably seen this pin. It has gone totally viral the past few weeks. So I thought, it's apple season, this pin is popular, I might as well try it out, right? Right. It was pretty delicious. Unfortunately, I left mine in the pan a little too long and it broke apart instead of being beautiful like the original photo above (from the original website). But it still tasted delicious! Also: I think it's pretty safe to say I use a lot of cinnamon.. Today my mom bought Cinnamon at Sam's Club, which means it's a ginormous container. When I asked why she bought so much she informed me that I've used an entire little container of cinnamon ever month for the past four months. Some things you just have to buy in bulk!

 If you don't have one of these, you should invest at once. They're amazing. Especially at Thanksgiving when you're making apple pie and apple crisp and apple cider etc, etc, etc. It literally takes 10 seconds to peel and core your apples this way. 

 You'll need 5 medium size apples for this recipe, peeled, cored, and diced. Cover them with the cinnamon and sugar and set overnight. I didn't read the recipe before starting, so I didn't really want to wait overnight to make the cake. If that's the case with you as well, you can do it the cheater way like me.. I just spread them in the bottom of a 9x13 pan and baked them at the lowest setting of my oven for about 10-15 minutes. The purpose of them sitting out was to allow the sugar to break down the apples a little to make them extra juicy, and so baking them accomplishes a similar effect in less than half an hour.

Cinnamon Apple Cake (found here)

Combine and set overnight:
5 Medium Apples, peeled, cored, and diced
2 t Cinnamon
6 T Sugar

3 C Flour
3 t Baking Powder
1/4 t Salt
2 C Sugar
1 C Vegetable Oil
1/2 C Orange Juice
2 1/2 t Vanilla
4 Eggs

Topping:
1 Stick Butter
2 t Cinnamon
5 t Sugar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Mix the dry ingredients, minus the sugar, together. Mix the wet ingredients, plus the sugar, together. (keeping the apples separate). Combine the two until well mixed. Layer the apples and cake batter in a greased tube pan. Bake at 350 for 1 1/2 hours. While it is baking heat the topping over medium heat in a small saucepan until bubbling. Set aside. When the cake has finished baking pour the topping over it and leave it in the warm oven for 5 minutes. This will form a hard sugary coating that is totally delicious. Enjoy!

#ODP13 Day Five

 Happy day five, y'all! Today was pretty lazy, I didn't wake up until 11 and then went to get groceries with my momma. So I just threw on this top (which is kind of my favorite top right now, I've worn it three times in the past month), a black belt, and my multi-colored converse, which were a gift from my grandma a few Christmases ago. I didn't even wear make-up because I ran out of eyeliner yesterday. Since I'm on a spending freeze, I thought I wasn't going to be wearing any eyeliner for a while, but my lovely mom said she would buy some for me :) So I'm trying out gel eyeliner now, have any of you tried it? Thoughts, advice?

#ODP13 Day Four

So my dad's a Major now, no biggie.. ;) Actually, it's kind of a huge biggie cause it took a lot of work to get here! Anyway, congrats dad! I had to look more dressed up for the ceremony (which I was kinda late to...what can you really do about class schedules?) so I paired The Dress with a filmy Wet Seal top (thrifted), orange beads, pink earrings, and black heels. I had my same pink flats from yesterday on earlier in the day while going to class, but I switched to heels on the drive to the ceremony. Happy day four!

I'm a Little Flower

 Guess what guys...I went shopping on Wednesday! Which means NEW (to me) CLOTHES! Which is pretty much my favorite thing ever, besides spending time with my family and friends, which can be done while shopping, so that's pretty awesome. So I got this dress at one of the thrift stores my mom and I went to for like $6. It reminds me of a flower and will from now on be known as my petal dress. It's getting way cold here (it was in the 30's last night) and the dress is strapless so I had to wear a little sweater (purchased at a garage sale for $0.50) and tights to keep warm. I wanted to pair it with these super cute new heels that I purchased, but I thought that would be too dressy for Bible Study and school, so I went with my silver sparkly TOMS. I'm also wearing my spoon ring (tutorial found here), charm bracelet, treble clef earrings, and black and gray headband. Thoughts?

Breaking Bottles

So I'm sure most of you have seen the pin about cutting bottles with string and fire. I've been wanting to try this one for a while, and I decided this past Sunday was the perfect day. I had been saving these bottles for about a month for such a time as this.

 I washed the labels off with warm water and got everything set up. I bring it all outside when I hit my first pitfall. My mother was sitting outside and she kind of freaked out about the fact that I was lighting bottles on fire on her front porch... After it was OK'd by dad (with the condition that I wear safety goggles) I was back on my way. 

Although the bottle says extremely flammable, I had a really hard time getting the string to light on fire. No biggy, I just switched to rubbing alcohol and that lit up just fine. I let the flame burn for about 30 seconds before I dunked it in the ice water pot. It cracked almost all the way around, and I just had to knock the top against the pot a few times before the whole top broke off. It's not a perfect straight line, but I think that adds character.

 The next one was a little more eventful. I soaked the string, wrapped it 6 times around the bottle, lit it on fire, and let it go. It all seemed to be going perfectly! 

 This picture was supposed to be of the fire, but you couldn't see it. It was burning though! I think I let it burn a little too long though, because when I dunked it in the ice water, well you can just see...

 It shattered...

 Good thing I was wearing safety glasses (aka, the biggest sunglasses I own...)

 The bottom was still pretty much in tact, so I was able to just sand the top smooth and make it work! 

 I chose to use dry black beans for the filling because my bathroom colors are black white and pink. 

 I really like the way it turned out!

It's Just Lunch

 My sister just got back from school to visit, and her absolute favorite thing to eat is pancakes. Usually we just make the bisquick kind, but since it was Sunday, I thought I'd do something a little special. So I browsed my "breakfast" board on Pinterest and came up with these Mexican Pancakes :) Cooler weather calls for cinnamon apples, right? And Sunday means breakfast for lunch, right? 

Mexican Pancakes (found here)

3 C Flour

4 T Sugar

1 T Cinnamon

3 t Baking Powder

3/4 t Salt

3 C Buttermilk

1/2 C Whole Milk

3 Eggs

1/3 C Butter, melted

3-4 Apples

2 T Butter

A hearty sprinkle of Cinnamon

Whisk together flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Mix together buttermilk, whole milk, eggs, and melted butter. Combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir until just combined. The mixture will be quite runny. Meanwhile, peel and slice your apples and place them in a skillet. Add the butter and cinnamon and simmer. Heat your pancake griddle completely before pouring the batter onto the pan. Brown on both sides, top with softened cinnamon apples, and enjoy!

Fresh Raspberry Sorbet

 It's raspberry season! My mom's absolute favorite fruit is raspberries, so when we went and picked bucketfuls the most natural thing to do would be to make raspberry sorbet, right?  I got the recipe from my new "Joy of Cooking" cookbook that my grandma sent me (she's pretty awesome)!

Fresh Raspberry Sorbet

2 t Unflavored Gelatin

1/4 C Cold Water

1 qt Fresh Raspberries

1/4 C Lemon Juice

1 1/3 C Water

3/4 C Sugar

2 Egg Whites

Chill your freezer bowl for at least 24 hours. Dissolve your gelatin in the 1/4 C cold water. Press the berries through a sieve (to remove seeds) and add the lemon juice. Boil 1 1/3 C water and sugar for 10 minutes. Add the gelatin to the hot syrup and dissolve. Cool and add berries. Chill for at least 1 hour. Pour the mixture into your freezer bowl attachment, add the 2 egg whites, and mix for 20-30 minutes.  Mine wasn't as firm as I like it after that time, but my freezer bowl was warming up so I transferred it into a freezer safe container and chilled it until firm. Enjoy!

Purple Zebras

  I love presents. Giving them, getting them, watching other people get them, pretty much anything to do with presents is my favorite thing ever. My grandma sent me a present out of the blue the other day and it is SUPER cute! It's a purple scarf with a medallion on it so it's a necklace and a scarf all in one! It's pretty awesome. I paired it with my zebra print skirt, a purple tank with a white top over it, and my black sandals.