Breakfast of champions

Birthday cake!

It's a recipe I got from my older brother, decades ago, for Roman Apple Cake. It's got whole wheat and white flour, lots of sliced apples, and a cinnamon-brown sugar-walnut crumble topping. Perfect with ice cream, or, in this case, a scoop of Greek yogurt. (Hey, breakfast, right?)

Denise normally makes my birthday cake--the only baking she does for the year, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting--but she overdid it yesterday, whacking blackberry canes, and I really wasn't in the mood for chocolate, anyway.

Oh man, I must be getting old.

In any event, we made it together. I mixed up the batter while she cored and sliced apples. While I was folding apples into batter and greasing the pan, she mixed up the crumble topping. Baked up moist and fragrant and yummy.

We've both been feeling a little confined lately, Denise in the house, me just generally in Eugene. I really wanted an escape, so we decided on a day trip to the coast. Nothing fancy; drive down to Florence, head north up 101 to our favorite beaches. Poke around in tide pools if we could, walk and look at flotsam if not. I took my sketchbook, for my drawing challenge, and we took a few photos as well. Visited Heceta Head, Stonefield Beach, Washburne State Park.

We missed the tide pools--two hours past low tide--and the fog steadfastly refused to lift, but we still had a lovely time. Lots of interesting seaweed and shells on the beach, plants growing out of the cliff face. Flocks of gulls at Heceta, down where the creek meets the beach, and a whole bunch of mussels washed up on the sand, still closed/live. Thought briefly about taking them home to steam--we'd done it once before--but wasn't sure I wanted the enormous barnacles that came with. Stonefield beach was littered with crab carapaces, all sizes, with the occasional plastron or legs. Don't know whether they were victims of the seagulls, also thick on the sand there, or washed up already picked clean. At least one had suspicious-looking holes in the back that might have been sea urchins? Fisheries biologist Denise couldn't venture and opinion (she specialized in salmonids). Walked down to the beach at Washburne--full of crows, rather than gulls. Who knew Oregon's beaches were segregated?


We wore masks when outside, packed a picnic lunch--cold pizza, cookies and fruit--to eat in the car, watching crows scavenge leftovers from the picnic table we were too cold to use. We'd planned on picking up fish and chips to go in Florence for supper, but by 3:30 we'd hiked ourselves out, so we put some podcasts on the car speaker, drove home, and took a nap before warming up leftovers for supper.

It was a good day to be 61.

Roman Apple Cake

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter or shortening
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 large or two small baking apples (we used Liberty today, because I bought a bag of "lunchbox apples" at Farmer's Market)
2 T butter
2 T all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Cream sugar and butter or shortening; mix in egg and vanilla.
Sift together flours, salt and leavening. Add to batter alternating with milk. Beat several minutes on high.
Wash, core, but do not peel apples. Cut into quarters, then thinly slice. Fold apples into batter, then transfer into a greased 9x13" cake pan.
Mix butter, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts until crumbly. Scatter evenly over top of batter.

Bake 30-35 minutes at 350° F.