Thanksgiving drunken apple cake.

Oh.



Well, hello there. It's been a while, hasn't it?


I'm sure anyone reading this entry (read: maybe two? three people? Hi, grandma!) is sick of my apologies by now and my ridiculous lapses in posting, but I truly am sorry. Barren as the blog may be, there hasn't been a lack of heavenly smells and sugary (and sometimes savory) treats in my apartment or my boyfriend's place. <-- Oh, right, that happened, too. Off-campus living and real kitchens for the win!

I mean, just yesterday I made this with my boyfriend (best Thanksgiving Eve decision ever - I'd include a photo but it's kind of already gone). In the last month, I can remember off the top of my head that I made this, these (and I highly recommend using more jam than you think you'll need, ohmygod so good), and these with pumpkin. There was October, the month of endless batches of gnocchi (potato and butternut squash editions), and, after the first batch, the breaking in of my dearly beloved KitchenAid (do you know how much stirring gnocchi requires? Pretty sure my right arm tripled in strength). I've made pizza dough, cinnamon rolls, popovers and many, many cookies. And yet, in all of that time, I didn't write a single word or snap a single photo. I didn't even halfheartedly open my Blogger page and then think better of it.

I was simply too lazy to blog.



I made all kinds of excuses - "I don't have a camera besides the one on my phone," "The lighting in here is awful," "I have math homework to do, and that toilet really does need cleaning" - and other times, when someone I was cooking with suggested I blog about it, I merely shrugged my shoulders. I mean, we were about to have something delectable to eat - did the rest of the world (again, the three people reading this) really need to know about it? Wasn't it enough to just enjoy it?

That all changed when I slid this baby into the oven this morning, just in time to let it cool slightly before bringing it to my boyfriend's family's home. I was actually frustrated while preparing it. The apples were browning faster than I could peel them, the butter refused to soften (until my brilliant boyfriend submerged the stiff butter-sugar mixture into a warm water bath - thanks!) and it all just seemed like an extraordinary hassle for an 8-inch square of cake. But once I'd spread the first layer of creamy sweet apple slices over the fluffy, delicate, rum-scented batter, I knew I'd hit upon something wonderful, something worth talking about.


Sure, it wasn't the easiest cake to make, definitely requiring more work than most of the things I've made recently, but it's the one that brought me back to blogging when nothing before stirred enough inspiration.



Oh, and did I mention it's downright delicious? You can find the recipe here - for now, I'm off to give my thanks for wonderful people, wonderful food, and the ability to realize that some things really are worth the effort.