We're Baaack...

Well, we're done jaunting for a while anyways. We are back from a very exhausting week. It really was a very nice funeral, it was so much more of a celebration of life than a time of mourning. It was wonderful to see family that we don't see very often, despite the circumstances for bringing us together. And the best part of the last few days? The kids were just wonderful! Abigail was sad at times, she really loved her Great-Grandma, but overall, the kids were so well behaved, and at times I think their unending joy for life was contagious and a necessary relief from the task at hand. Don't they look tired here this afternoon?



We arrived back home around noonish today, and after a brief period of rest and a much needed cup or two of good coffee, I felt the itch. The itch to cook or bake something. I decided that Andy needed to fire up the grill tonight, so I pulled a pair of pork steaks out of the freezer and set to work peeling and dicing some sweet potatoes to grill alongside. A nicely steamed vegetable medly rounded out tonights's meal, but that didn't really fix the itch. For me that was more assembly than cooking. I looked around in my pantry and decided that I needed to make a pineapple upside down cake with some crushed pineapple I had in the pantry. The challenge? I never made a pineapple upside down cake from scratch. It's always started with a box mix. (I know, the horror!) But it was good...so today, with no box mix on hand, and no desire to head to the store, I needed to find a recipe for real pineapple upside down cake.

I headed to www.Allrecipes.com. A search turned up quite a few results, but none of them sounded quite what I was looking for- not to mention, many started with that box of cake mix. The I stumbled upon a recipe by Sandra for Cottage Pudding- Upside Down Cake. The word pudding always captures my attention, and reading through the recipe, I decided this was the one. And after a brief moment of thought, decided to make it as written, using the apples instead of my original desire for pineapple. I did double the butter and brown sugar in the pan. I wanted to make sure I had a nice and gooey layer, and that worked perfectly, I will do that again. It tasted great! Andy really liked it, and said that he actually liked it better than pineapple upside down cake, so that's quite a compliment. A change that I think should be made is to eliminate the 1/2 cup of shortening in the cake batter, and use butter instead. I think the flavor of the actual cake part would be better then. I might also consider using buttermilk instead of milk next time too... but overall, it gets a big thumbs up, and will be a repeat here. I am always on the lookout for good homemade desserts that are also on the simple side. You can catch my modified recipe at the Treasure Trove.

That's it for tonight. I have laundry to do, kids to put to be early, and early to bed is sounding pretty good to me too. Tomorrow is Sunday Company Dinner, and we're still undecided as to what we're making...if it's something fun, I'll be sure and share. Happy Weekend!