It's been a while...

Wow! It's been a really long time since I posted to my blog. I've made lots of great things since July that I should have been posting. Now I'm inspired again. My sister and her friends visited this past weekend and I made them an apple cake. I also made one for a potluck at work. Both groups gave rave reviews. I've had many requests for the apple cake recipes, so I'm posting it here.

See recipe for apple cake below. I used butter instead of margarine. I just don't buy margarine. I also used whatever type of apples were on hand. The last one I made had 2 honeycrisps and 1 granny smith. In my oven, I only needed to bake for 55 minutes, so be careful with the cooking time.

I also made turkey meatballs last week. They are great to freeze and are best heated up in sauce. This helps them stay moist. The microwave also works well. I heated them up in the oven as described in the recipe and they were kind of dry. I usually adjust the recipe and make 2 1/2 lbs of turkey meat so that we have lots to freeze.

Cinnamon Apple Cake:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=520875

Turkey Meatballs:
Since I can't figure out how to post pdfs to this blog, I will type out the recipe for you.
1 lb turkey
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Put all the ingredients together and use your clean hands to incorporate everything together. Roll between palms into meatballs of whatever size you prefer. I do mine about 1 inch. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and coat with cooking spray. Gently brown meatballs for about 2 minutes. Transfer to cookie sheet with sides, it's okay if the meatballs are touching. Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes. When they come out of the oven you can eat them immediately. Also, you can transfer to another cookies sheet, this time don't let them touch, cool to room temperature and then freeze. Once frozen, transfer to a ziploc freezer bag. The best way to thaw them out is by throwing them in pasta sauce for 20 minutes on the stovetop.

This recipe appeared in the September 2008 issue of Cooking Light on page 18.