Happy Fall Y'all

Fall really hasn't arrived here, but I can wish. We're still in post hurricane mode. Things are moving along, but everywhere you look there are piles of debris and the landscape has a 'tilt' to it that comes from light poles and signs having been bent by 100 plus mile an hour winds.

Another birthday at work, so I went in search of an apple cake recipe. Prior to reading blogs I read food-related message boards on AOL (still do). Someone recently posted this recipe for an apple cake that looked good.

FRESH APPLE CAKE
1 cup oil
2 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg (I did not use this)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups apples peeled, cored, and chopped fine
1 cup chopped and toasted pecans

Icing:
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bundt pan. In large bowl mix oil, sugar and eggs. Add vanilla. Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, soda and salt. Blend into oil mixture. Fold in apples and pecans. Pour into pan and bake for 55-60 minutes. Remove cake from pan to cool. For icing, bring brown sugar, butter and milk to boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Beat with spoon until icing is cool. Icing thickens up as it cools. Drizzle over cake.

FoodBuzz

You may have noticed a little widget on the left side of my blog titled 'FoodBuzz'. Thanks to Carla over at Chocolate Moosey who gave me an invite to join, I became a member. Here's a snippet from their recent media launch. It's an exciting program and I'm happy to be a part of it.
Check them out!

Foodbuzz is the only online community with content created exclusively by food bloggers and rated by foodies. The site offers more than 20,000 pieces of new food and dining content weekly, including recipes, photos, blog posts, videos and restaurant reviews. Members decide the "tastiness" of each piece of content by voting and "buzz" the most popular posts to the top of the daily menu of submissions. Foodbuzz currently logs over 13 million monthly page views and over three million monthly unique visitors.

"Our goal is to be the number-one online source of quality food and dining content by promoting the talent, enthusiasm and knowledge of food bloggers around the globe," said Ben Dehan, founder and CEO of Foodbuzz, Inc. "

Citrus Burst Muffins

I had some Craisins that needed to be used up. I looked at the Ocean Spray website and found this recipe. I love the combination of orange with cranberry. Ocean Spray also has a new flavor of Craisins with Orange in them. I haven't tried them yet, but they sound really good.

CITRUS BURST MUFFINS

2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt, optional
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
1 cup Craisins
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1/3 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease or line a 12-cup muffin tin. Combine flour, both sugars, baking powder and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Combine milk, orange juice, oil and egg in a separate mixing bowl. Add liquid ingredients to dry, stirring just until dry ingredients are moist. Stir in Craisins orange zest. Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way full of batter. Sprinkle tops of muffins with pecans and sugar. (I just stirred in pecans and did not add the sugar). Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 5 minutes in muffin tin. Remove muffins from tin; cool on a wire rack.