My cousin Zeynep baked this cake when we were in Mersin a few weeks ago, and I copied down the recipe even before tasting it. My insticts told me that it has got to be good since I do not recall her asking for a recipe and willing to try it right after getting back home. She quickly put together the ingredients and we had it with some linden blossom tea my mom made along with the home made cookies.

What made this cake interesting is the cup of orange juice poured over it right after it is baked. One can make a coctail out of all the citrus available; I bet it would be nice. The recipe can be adjusted to summer time by replacing the apples with peaches, too.

I suggest baking in a metal baking pan, instead of glass.

What you need:

1. 1 cup sugar
2. 2 eggs, room temperature
3. 2 1/2 cups flour
4. 1/2 cup extra light olive oil
5. 1/2 cup warm milk
6. 1 tsp baking pwder
7. 1 tsp vanilla extract

Topping

1. 1 medium/large cooking apple
2. 2 Tbs sugar
3. 1 tsp cinnamon

After baking
1 cup of orange juice, freshly squeezed is preferred

Directions:

1. Slice the apple pretty thin and coat them with sugar and cinnamon, set aside
2. Heat the oven to 350F
3. Beat the sugar and eggs, add oil and milk
4. In another bowl, sift the flour with baking powder
5. Add the dry ingredients to the sugar mix slowly, add the vanilla extract at the end making sure everything is mixed thoroughly
6. Grease a 10inch spring form pan, and pour the cake mix over
7. Put the apple sliced on the cake mix, not necessarily in any order
8. Bake for 30 - 35mins, until the inserted knife comes out clean
9. Take out of the oven, put on a cookie sheet to catch any orange juice that might spil and pour the orange juice over the cake; making sure every part gets its fair share
10. Let it cool on cooling racks, and do not forget to serve with a nice warm cup of tea or coffee

Bon Apetit

I like simple things. Nothing fancy. And before you read this, I must tell you that I am not very creative or good at crafts.

Searching for simple things became a slight issue when we were deciding on the wedding invitations. I must confess I didn’t look around too much but as much as I have seen, there was no wedding invitation that I liked, that I wanted it to be my invitation. I knew what I wanted: a thick cardstock base (where the invitation would be written on) and a vellum top. I didn’t know how I would put them together, and using ribbons were my last resort.

After searching high and low I finally found the vellum that has speckles on it. They were simple enough with a hint of color. My search for the one sided invitation cards had a happy ending after finding these in Target. Again the question was how to stick them together. Kim, a very talented friend of mine, provided me with some ideas and her scrapbook making tools. Finally we ended up buying the wired ribbons.

Rest was simple, but time consuming. First the invitations were printed on the cardstock. This sounds easy to do, but it took us a while to choose the font, the writing etc! And later came the cutting the vellum about 1inch shorter (in width and height) than the cardstock. This was easily achieved by using the paper cutter. Just stacking a carstock and vellum on each other and using a one hole puncher I punched two holes 1/3 way from the bottom and top. Cut the ribbon about 12″, and pull it through the top, twist at the back and pull them back from the other hole (different than the one that went in) to secure the vellum to the cardstock. Voila! You have your hand-made invitation cards!

Thanks God, while I was spending my time on these, my mom already arranged the invitations to be distributed w/in Turkey to be made by professionals. In principle, they have the same idea as the ones I made but they are more colorful as you see.

A good friend of mine, Wynter, told me that she would like to throw me a bridal shower. As much as I wanted to be with friends I didn’t want to have a shower but at the end I gave in. It really is nice to give something back to all those nice people that came to be with us, and I again wanted to put something together. Since it was in the beginning of November and the stores were full of bulbs, I decided to buy some bulbs and use them as favors. This time I didn’t have time to make little pouches but I bought them from the store. Sam prepared a little “how to” guide to plant and take care of the tulip bulbs and every pouch had 3 bulbs along with this writing. We also had a nice baby shower given for Wynter who was pregnant then. Here you can see her favor for us: elegant tea bags in these nice containers!

And lastly the wedding favors… My mom organized this so I had no input but needless to say I loved them! They were again hand made by a friend of my mom’s. She even made the pouches! Colorful bags filled with lavender. Smell perfect!