I’ve had company visiting for the weekend (which actually seems to often be the case!) so to make the “hey, sure, you can sleep in the spare bed” more like a bed and breakfast experience, I made some banana-bread like thing to snack on in the morning. I’m not sure if I should call this banana *bread* or *coffee cake* so I went with Bundt Cake, just because of the pan I used. Super light and fluffy; totally yummy.
The first time that I heard about apple butter, I was very confused. It’s a bit of a misnomer of course — there is no daily in this butter! In essence, it is just very concentrated apple sauce. Sort of a jam. Not even close to being a jelly. The nice thing: it works great as an addition to pies and makes a great filling for these bars. You can of course make it yourself, but it seems to be readily available in the shops these days too.
I was having a conversation the other day with a close friend about one-pot meals. OK, the conversation was actually more about hating to wash the dishes, but along the same lines. He shared with me a Jambalaya recipe (not this one) which reminded me that I hadn’t made Jambalaya myself in a a while. GReat dish and this feeds an army of people. Shrimp / prawns are optional, but I like them, so in they went. Start to finish in under an hour.
At the farmer’s market last weekend, I came across these really small plums. They are only about the size of a walnut ball, maybe even a little smaller. They were too enticing not to buy. Plum cakes are actually very common in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe, so I thought that minimum, I would make one of my standard plum cakes before I came up with the idea of making an upside down cake. Turned out lovely. All the caramel and toffee bits you see in the photos is where the butter and brown sugar leaked out of my spring form pan (advice : don’t use a spring form pan!). If you can’t find mini-plums, regular ones will work just as well.