Autumn - Season of Fruit-Filled Cake!

Carrot and pineapple cake

Oh October!

Last month we hosted a teenage boy from overseas for two days and so what do teenage boys like? Cake. I made coconut and jam tarts and carrot cake from the Norfolk cookbook and a rich chocolate cake with orange and lemon from Gill MacLennan's Chocolate. According to my note in Chocolate, I last made that cake about six years ago. When making carrot cake I usually use the Good Housekeeping recipe from 1989 and I think I'll go back to it. The Norfolk recipe included a lot of sugar both in the cake batter and the cream cheese topping. The coconut and jam tarts were a big hit.

Now for November

Amaretti plum cake

This morning the spouse and I co-hosted a coffee morning fund-raising event for the younger offspring. He'll be heading off to sunnier climes next year to take part in a charitable project. What an opportunity for me to engage in a bake-fest!

From the Norfolk cookbook I made the morning muffins which I first made back in April. Everything else was from Good Housekeeping's Step by Step Baking. I think this is the only one of my baking recipe books that advises on freezing cakes - very handy when you want to bake a lot of cakes but don't want to wear yourself out on one day.

I made amaretti plum cake (gorgeous!), iced rosemary cake, carrot cake (from the 1989 recipe), fruited buttermilk cake, molasses, prune and walnut teabread, and rippled date and banana loaf. Yum.

I missed this year's annual honey show which takes place in a nearby church hall. I couldn't be in two places at once. Obviously.

Date and banana loaf

Book Buzz

I recently read Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. There is a bee connection but that's all I'm telling you.

I referenced Ode to Autumn in the main title so I'll finish with the opening stanza, just because bees get a mention:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Until next time.

Minnie

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