here ya go....those formatting problems with the fractions are really beyond annoying! Apple Cake 4 cups chopped apples 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/2 cup raisins ( I use chopped other fruit like dried peaches or apricots) Mix and let sit for about an hour ( less is OK) 2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsps baking soda ( I like 3/4 tsps soda and 3/4 tsps BP) 3/4 tsps salt 1T cinnamon 1/4 tsp nutmeg Mix dry ingredients 2 eggs 3/4 cups veggie oil 1 tsp vanilla beat together 1 cup chopped pecans if desired. Add the oil and eggs to the apples and sugar and dried fruit. Stir in the dry mixture and add nuts if desires. Pour into greased 9 by 13 pan and bake 350 until done�..40 to 50 minutes. Serve with cake gravy! Cake Gravy Mix 1 cup sugar ..half brown half white 1 stick butter 1/2 cup light cream 1 tsp vanilla�. Mix all and cook all in a sauce pan for about 5 or 6 minutes until caramel colored. Serve warm over the cake.

Virginia, you're so right - I'm quite sure a lot more cream and jam is exactly what the nutritionists have in mind... :-) How clever of you to have a talented baker for a DH - you chose well... Marlorena - aah - mine has a different flower in the centre - I can't quite think what it is now; looks rather hibiscus like, but it wouldn't be that. I must check it out. Fancy you being a Cornish girl! (We learn more about each other on this forum every day!...) As a child we had several blissful summer holidays in Cornwall, and my sister lived there for many years. One year, our family stayed in a farmhouse way down in the south west, where the lady of the house kept us stuffed to the eyeballs with the most enormous home-cooked meals that seemed to arrive roughly every half-hour whenever we were at home. Every meal was accompanied by lashings of clotted cream, and one day Mrs Jeffries invited us girls into her kitchen to see it being made. There it was, in big trays sitting on top of the kitchen range, gorgeous creamy raw milk direct from their cows, gently heating as the cream slowly thickened, separated out and collected in an unctuous golden crust across the top, to be scooped off with a big flat spoon. I was fascinated, and wanted to hang around forever to see and understand the whole thing... I always carried that image in adulthood, as being exactly how food 'should' be - straight off the land in which it grew/was produced, and cooked, baked and served up in a generous, never ending flow from a big, plain farmhouse kitchen by an apple-cheeked farmer's wife!

Nancy, that sounds good to me, I don't like the candied fruit in traditional fruit cake, but dried fruit would be just fine for me. Annie

I like to bake, so I like to bake pretty much any of the cakes. I do not consider cheesecake a cake, and I don't particularly like it, but I bake them for Elery regularly as they are favorite of his. I also do not consider Boston Cream Pie to be pie, and it is the cake The Princess asked for on her birthday, so i gladly made it. We all ate it, so it must have been OK. I also made a Tres Leches cake for my birthday a year or so ago, and although it was kind of soggy, I thought it was good, as was the Italian Cream Cake I made for Elery at Christmas. It's not as much fun for me to make "plain" cakes, but Ashley likes Texas Sheet Cake, and Madi and Maci both like "vanilla cake". Amanda is celiac, of course, so she just wants gluten free lemon bars, LOL. I do have a weakness for moist chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache, but it just takes a tiny bit to be enough, it's so rich. Annie