Oh yeah, there is nothing better than cake for breakfast.

I’ve had about 8 out-of-season honeycrisp apples in my fridge for a month now because they were sour and not good for eating out of hand. This week I’m vowing to use them up in various baked preparations that will bring out their sweetness.

First use: Emily‘s recipe for cinnamon apple glazed cake squares that was featured on Eat Live Run recently.

I made a ton of substitutions to work with what I had. Apple butter rather than apple sauce, chickpea flour rather than whole wheat pastry flour, a little oil to fill in for not having enough butter, added an extra apple, and used real eggs rather than flax eggs. I also tried baking it in a 9×9 pan instead to make them fluffier, and with 20 extra minutes of baking it worked!

These cake squares are so, so insanely good. I fully intended on making the glaze that goes with them but after trying them naked I decided to leave it alone.

With a hot cup of tea, inspected for quality by Liam, it was a fantastic breakfast.

3 apples down, 5 more to go.

What’s your favorite baked apple recipe?

June 24, 2011 Alayna Discussion 4 comments

Here’s a few more snippets of the foods I’ve been enjoying lately…

Last night was spicy basil beef. It is absolutely outrageous and tastes great with tofu too.

I’ll share the recipe another time, it is one of my top 5 favorite dishes that I make regularly, so it’s bound to come up again soon.

I did end up making that apple crumble I was threatening to whip up last night…

…and promptly dug into it while it was still piping hot!

Then I followed it up with a donut…

I enjoyed this donut on the couch, my favorite place to nibble chocolate donuts.

Breakfast this morning was the last piece of kabocha pecan bread absolutely smothered in maple cinnamon flavored quark.

Holy mother of pearl. I’m gonna have to bake another loaf just so I can have this again! It tasted like dense and rich carrot cake, for breakfast!

And lastly, I am currently munching on this salad creation…

The salad I had the other day was so good that I whipped up something similar using a piece of roasted pepper and changing the dressing a bit.

I made a quick dressing with a bit of whole grain mustard, honey, and olive oil all mixed up together. It was simple and really married the peppers and pears together well.

That’s all for now, time to start figuring out what I’m gonna make for dinner.

December 13, 2010 Alayna Discussion 1 comment

8am is one of my favorite parts of the day. Jeff gets up and gets ready at 7:30 then wakes me up so we can have breakfast together, and as warm and comforting as that bed is, I really do want to get up for our morning ritual.

He’ll fill up the teapot and put it on the hot eye, we’ll both arrange our tea necessities, he’ll start mixing up his instant oats while I pet the cats who are starving for love after a night alone. I’ll make a remark about how fricken freezin it is in our apartment and then we’ll take our things to the desk and check our email and favorite sites and blogs and whatnot.

I don’t always make breakfast right away while Jeff is making his, and I didn’t today because I knew that I didn’t want oats again but I didn’t know what I did want.

Maybe I could do something with this?…

Picked up this container of quark at the market yesterday, not really knowing what to expect. I just thought it’d be an interesting departure from yogurt.

I plopped some on top of a chopped apple with cinnamon, granola, and honey.

It had the consistency of greek yogurt with the smell of sour cream and the taste of cream cheese. The flavor was really strong in this big dollop so I mixed it all in to distribute it better.

I ended up pouring a bit of maple syrup on top as well to try and cut through the rich cheese flavor. I thought I didn’t like it at first bite, but as my palate got used to it I really started to enjoy it. The whole mixture tasted like a deconstructed apple cream cheese danish.

All in all, I really like it. I don’t think I would eat it straight like yogurt but it was really good mixed in with other flavors.

Ever had quark?

Something else you can think of that I should try?

December 8, 2010 Alayna Discussion, Taste Test 3 comments