“Allysa loves to get up really early when she has guests visiting for the weekend and make this coffee cake… It’s out of the oven before everyone else wakes up for breakfast.” (p. 31)

Monsieur le Patissier de Chezbonneau was away on a humanitarian trip in the beautiful country of Sri Lanka during the past week – thus no baking. A side benefit of visiting a tropical country such as Sri Lanka, is the opportunity to pick up locally grown spices. We came back with Sri Lankan cinnamon that we picked up on a cinnamon island and a dozen huge, fresh vanilla pods. Needless to say, these ingredients will soon find their way into our baking.

I did manage to whip up a quick recipe this morning using Sri Lankan vanilla. Recipe below. Story to develop as the day wears on and the Social Studies department forms an opinion of the treat that landed in their team room this morning.

RECIPE LINK

DETOUR (short): I cannot always find the ingredients listed in the Magnolia cookbook. The recipe called for a 20 oz. can of sliced apples as a way of reducing prep time in the early morning, but I couldn’t find any at Carrefour. It didn’t really bother me since I didn’t like the idea of canned apples anyway. So, I bought some Golden Delicious apples and used 4 of them in my cake. ALSO: The recipe calls for baking this cake in a tube pan. I haven’t yet been able to find out what a tube pan is, so I used a springform bundt pan with a tube through its middle. When cooled, it released almost perfectly.

How ’bout them apples?

Since I didn’t have pre-pared apples, I used an apple slicer/corer and a small paring knife to get the job done. It was relatively quick and easy and left me with nice, juicy chunks of apple to fill the cake. One of the Social Studies teachers commented to me in the hallway how light and fluffy this cake was. I agreed.