Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Made this for a Football Sunday Chili Cook Off with friends. It is simple and amazing. I'm going to make it in these mini bundt pans for my work party on Sunday. Kinda excited about it, in a sicko, I love to bake stuff kinda way!

The Year of the Bark

So, every year for the holiday season, I make something that I can give as a "food gift"... for co-workers, friends, teachers, neighbors, etc... It's usually fudge. Fudge is pretty simple and you can package it nicely. I've grown tired of fudge.

Two years ago, I'd grown tired of fudge. I decided to make these Martha Stewart cookies that consisted of like 346 steps. They weren't hard, no complicated techniques or anything... just a very long process. At about step 327, I needed some counter space in my tiny apartment kitchen so I stuck the cookies in the oven while I did other things. On Christmas Eve, I was very very very sick. Like gonna die from a head cold sick. But I'd promised to bring a pumpkin pie to a friend's family's get together, so I pre-heated the oven and made my pie. The pain in the ass Martha Stewart cookies and a butt-load of plastic RubberMaid tubs were melted all over the inside of my oven.

So this year, with my boredom of fudge having returned, I'm going with bark. All you gotta do is melt some chocolate: dark, milk, semi-sweet, white, whatever... and add some crunchy bits to it. Then you let it harden and then you break it. Yep, break it, you don't even have to cut it. It looks pretty all packaged up in little baggies too. I've got what I've deemed "Movie Theater Bark" (that perfect blend of salty and sweet, like popcorn and M&M's) chillin' in the fridge right now. Semi-sweet chocolate swirled with a little bit of white chocolate, topped with crushed pretzels and mini M&M's!

Here's a fun article from Food TV Magazine with some mix and match ideas. Bark it up.

What's next?

What shall I make this coming weekend?

I'll let you guys choose!

Option A: Vanilla Pumpkin Cupcake with Cinnamon Buttercream

Option B: Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Whoopie!

No, not the cushion.... and no, not the euphemism for sex used on The Newlywed Show. Whoopie as in Whoopie Pies. I don't think I've ever had an actual Whoopie Pie, but I've been seeing them pop up everywhere lately on baking blogs and in cooking magazines. I found this recipe from epicurious.com and decided to give it a try. They turned out pretty good overall... very messy and the filling needed to be a little thicker to stay put, but still rather tasty. They are reminiscent of a Hostess cupcake. And yes, I am aware they aren't technically a "cupcake" but since this is my blog, I can bake and post about whatever the hell I want! = )

I miss my cupcakes...

So the Cupcake Sunday experiment got a smidge off track.... football season was to blame. GO SAINTS! But I digress. I won't commit to cupcakes every Sunday, but every once in a while, yes.

Last week, I whipped up Martha's Banana Cupcakes with honey-cinnamon frosting. The cupcakes by themselves were yummy, but the frosting was, well, the icing on the cake! I didn't get any pictures of mine, they disappeared too fast.