today's message is brought to you by the color green.

a couple of weeks ago i was hanging out with my new & marvelous friend vanessa and she gave me a piece of apple cake that she had made earlier in the day. it was so pretty that i almost didn't want to eat it and so delicious that i could have eaten the whole cake. now that is saying a lot coming from me, a girl who has never ever liked cooked apples of any sort. apple pie, no thanks! apple turnover, nope! apple cobbler, uh uh! not even applesauce! but this cake, oh boy this cake was good. so i looked up the recipe (found here) and made it for the first time last weekend with my uncle and again this morning with the squirrels. i have plans to make it yet again next week for a jake's mom's birthday, she loves cooked apples of all sorts!

in addition to being both pretty & delicious (& magic, it got me eating cooked apples!) the cake is oh so easy to make! i think everyone should make it, at least once.

apple sharlotka (i love saying sharlotka, it's a good fancy sounding word)

~recipe from smitten kitchen

the things i used:

- local organic butter (for buttering the pan)

- 6 large local organic green apples

- 3 large eggs from our hens

- 1 cup organic evaporated cane juice

- 1 tsp vanilla, homemade

- 1 cup organic local white whole wheat flour

- quite a lot of organic cinnamon

- a little bit of organic powdered sugar (for dusting the top)

the way i did it:

- preheat the oven to 350 degrees

- line the bottom of a 9-inch cake pan with parchment paper, then butter the paper and the sides of the pan. (you're supposed to use a spring-form pan but i don't have one, yet! so i used a regular one and it worked out okay)

- peel, core/slice (thank you apple slicer!) the apples and then chop them into 1/4 inch-ish pieces.

- put the cut apples in the prepared pan & sprinkle with ground cinnamon (i like a lot of cinnamon)

- in a separate bowl or mixer, beat the eggs & sugar until thick, add the vanilla and then stir in flour with a spoon until just combined.

- pour the batter over the apples in the pan and press it down into the apples a bit so that the batter and apples are level. 

- bake for about an hour, until a tester comes out clean

- let it cool a bit then flip it over, peel off the parchment paper, and flip it back onto a pretty plate.

- dust with (a lot of) ground cinnamon & (a little bit of) powdered sugar

now you can eat it and i dare to let it last more than one day!