Happening upon honey-caramel apple bundt cake

What do you do when you’re inundated with beautiful rosy apples from a tree in the yard, year after year?  If you’re my mother-in-law, you chop them up and freeze them, and use them to make an apple crisp every week until the next autumn.  If you’re me, you chop them up and freeze them, then shove them to the bottom of the freezer, then discover them two years later during a freezer clean-up, then say “oh, I should really use those,” at which point they get shoved back into the freezer for another year until your freezer is bursting.  Then you take them out and say “oh hell, I should really use those.”  Then you happen to go to the doctor's office, where you happen to have to wait for a long, long time (oh wait, this always happens), where you happen to see a current issue of Canadian Living, which happens to have a recipe for a honey-caramel apple bundtcake, which happens to use chopped-up apples.  

Then you would buy a new oven, and make the cake.  At this point you have to have a glass of wine to celebrate this happy accident, and you follow up the wine with a slice of your newly-made honey-caramel apple bundt cake, which, though a bit rough around the edges, is just as delicious as it sounds.

Streets Ahead: or, A Day in the Life

My very first blog post!  I’ve had false starts before, but this is my first real real post.  I first want to introduce myself by telling you what I’m working on.  I always have tons of projects on the go, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing.

A knitting project that I just finished…

Miles and miles of stockinette, which I love.  This is Citron from Knitty and it’s for my sister, as a present.  She made me a bolero for my wedding, and I had this gorgeous laceweight yarn just waiting for the perfect project. 

A knitting project that I am almost finished…

Still tons of stockinette!  I chose this project to try and use up stash yarn.  Do you ever buy yarn for a project, and three (or six, or eight) years later, the yarn is still sitting there and you’re not interested in that project anymore?  I do this all the time.  I have enough of this Knitpicks Palette in Twig (I think the colour is discontinued) to make a sweater, if I’m careful, or a big shawl, and when I gauge-swatched I got the right gauge for the Bayside Pullover from Coastal Knits.  So it’s off to the races!

Some baking to eat...

What do you get when you put together a bunch of crumbs

and a bowlful of rosy peaches from BC?

Brown-butter peach squares (and a curious little owl mug, apparently)!

 

We are currently enjoying these.  I did find out that they don't freeze all that well (they get soggy when they're defrosted) but they're still golden and delicious.  You can find the recipe in Home-Baked Comfort.

A baking project to try…

My friend bought me this book for my birthday, and I’m so excited to try macarons.  I looked at a few books in Chapters, including this one and this one, but I chose Mercotte because it was the most comprehensive and creative:  lots of troubleshooting tips (which I know I’m going to need!) and interesting flavour combinations.

This is just a taste of what I'm up to.  I love knitting, crochet, embroidery, baking (and eating!), and making jewellery, and I'm getting ready to open up an Etsy shop soon.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back soon!

Valerie