I’ve always wanted a really good cookbook with easy French recipes.  I’ve tried a few recipes here and there, but most of them were time consuming and honestly a little intimidating.  I stumbled across this cooking club and thought well that looks like something I could do.  I am so glad that I did.  Honestly this cookbook is fantastic.  It has beautiful pictures and a really wide range of recipes that are easy.  I’ve got mine bookmarked to the hilt!  The recipe for this week was Marie Helene’s Apple Cake.  When I first looked through the cookbook this recipe immediately caught my eye, and it was a great recipe to start with.  I won’t be sharing the whole recipe here, but giving some highlights.  I highly recommend getting the book;  Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours.  





It’s the tail-end of the apple season here in the Midwest but that means I scored some great deals on apples.  The recipe cites a mixture of apples as being the best and so that’s what I did.  


All it takes are a few simple ingredients, eggs, butter, sugar, and the like.  The original recipe also called for rum, but as we are halal household I omitted it and increased the amount of vanilla.  I finally had a good reason to use the Mexican pure vanilla extract my mom bestowed on me!  





Everything gets mixed up and placed into a spring form pan.  I topped mine with crushed almond powder. 
Bake for about an hour and….





Ta daaa! Mine is a little more brown because of the almonds but the flavor it gave was really a warm, toasty, nutty flavor.  



I whipped this up last night and couldn’t wait to dig in but…I got sick.  This morning I knew I couldn’t post my pictures and story without tasting it so guess what I had for breakfast….apple cake!  I warmed it up a little bit and mixed some Greek yogurt with powdered sugar on the side.  It was fantastic.  I don’t even like apple pie but this was out of this world, and the yogurt made me feel like it wasn’t so bad to have it for breakfast.  


I can’t wait for next week!  If you want to find more pictures of this week’s recipe or to join in on the fun come visit!