Fall = Baking

When the first crisp breezes hit Chicago and my allergies cause my nose to itch uncontrollably I know it is Fall. This is exciting for me because Fall is one of my favorite seasons, I say one of because I love them all with the exception of winter - in Chicago, winter sucks.


Fall means cozy sweaters, warm coffee, leaves falling, and apple picking! Apple picking means I need to figure out something to do with close to 11lbs of apples before they rot on my counter! Luckily, us industrious scientists decided to have another BBQ - gotta squeeze them in before the gray, gross winter covers us. My contribution to this shindig was a super easy and equally delicious apple cake. I scoured the internet for a recipe that looked uncomplicated and comfortable. I don't think apple cake should be putting on airs but rather embracing what it truly is - a dessert as cozy as the first sweater day of fall.
This cake started with the most important part - the apples! I mentioned previously that I spent a weekend at a beautiful lake house, well that weekend ended with an apple picking excursion!

Here are the bf and myself handpicking these amazingly HUGE Honeycrisp apples by hand. This was so much fun and took me back to memories of apple picking with my family while growing up awwwww so precious

So now that we have the goods the baking can commence, and it did and it was good... see?

 

I apologize for the lack of photo documentation, I promise to you (no fingers are crossed - really!) that I personally put this cake together. I also promise to you that this blogging thing is new to me so sometimes it slips my very sharp and agile mind that I actually need to be taking artistic pictures of things like apple slices and batter dripping from mixers. I swear I will improve (but a fancy camera may accelerate this process - shameless Christmas gift plug? I'm okay with it)

One of the things I really loved about this cake is that there are apples both baked into the batter as well as on top of the cake. You get the moistness of those tucked safe inside while those on top give an almost chewy, dried fruit quality. Very, very nice.

 

My entire apartment smelled like Fall and I must say my pictures very closely resembled those on Smitten Kitchen's website - two pats on the back for me!

This cake was devoured in one day - and this is a sizable cake. After doing all the hard labor my poor bf got only a small(ish) piece, but this gives reason to make another!

Stay tuned to see if I remember to take more pictures of the actual baked goods or if I just continue to make you look at awkwardly posed pictures of the bf and myself - I think either is a good reason to return!