Happy Halloween! It’s the day for creepy costumes and fairy princesses or that’s what I hope for every year. I love seeing kids in their costumes. Not one trick or treater this year so the bag of candy bars will just have to be eaten. Bugger.
As promised, we dressed Charlie up in his Halloween costume (a bee) and went to the nursing home with a big basket of candy bars. Now I bet you’re thinking they’d be really happy to see a dog dressed up as a bee and carrying a basket of candy bars. They all looked at us as though we had just stepped off an alien spaceship.
Halloween is just now catching on in Australia and these oldies had no idea what we were there for. None.
“It’s Halloween, the day kids dress up in fancy dress (that’s costume in Australian) and go door to door and say Trick or Treat and the homeowner gives them candy,” I said. John’s father said something about me and American and I told him to hush.
Blank stares all around.
Nothing to do but go to the dining room, park Charlie under the table and we had coffee, cookies and a LOT of candy. John’s mother polished off about 8 pumpkin kisses, a box of smarties and 3 Cadbury chocolate bars. AND cookies. I asked her if she was full and she said, “Oh, I never eat anything, it’s why I’m so thin.” I thought about pointing out that she’d eaten three filled cookies, a cup of coffee and all that candy but she wouldn’t have remembered that she ate it. In her mind, she hasn’t eaten anything since she arrived at the nursing home.
I came home and made a cake that I’d seen on the Recipe Girl’s site. I found it on Pinterest first and followed the link to her site. It’s apple pie cake. It sounded really good so I printed out the recipe and got to work.
This cake takes 5 or 6 apples that are peeled and sliced and placed in the bottom of a springform pan. Then cake batter is made and poured on top and you bang the pan on the counter to get the batter down through the apples. I think when I make this again I’ll mix the apples into the batter. It won’t be so pie-like but it will cook more evenly I think. In order to get the skewer to come out batter free I had to bake it an extra 10 minutes.
I’m listing the ingredients on the blog because I’ve made some changes but I want to do the right thing and ask you to visit Lori’s site to get the full recipe. She came up with the idea and deserves all the credit. Yes the crust does crack as the apples cook but that just makes it all better. Lori’s cracked too.
- 6 to 8 Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3 large eggs
- 1½ cups caster or superfine white sugar
- 1½ cups vegetable or canola oil
- 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1½ cups plain or all-purpose flour
- more cinnamon-sugar to sprinkle on top (same as above)