Streusel Apple-Spice Cake

This cake was just fun.
I made it late at night... I can't recall why I couldn't sleep.
I remember Thunderous couldn't either and ended up down in the kitchen as it came out of the oven.
We shared a piece and had a great debate over this recipe.
Thunderous stands that it is named incorrectly. It is baked in a loaf pan...therefore it is a quick bread and should be called Streusel Apple-Spice Bread.
I hold that he is too literal and it is indeed a cake.
The next morning when the rest of the family had some we asked their stand.
Mouths full they would only say, "It's GOOD!"

Now you try it and decide: Cake or quick Bread

I was lucky enough to have apples that the kids and I had picked, peeled, sliced and frozen the fall before. They worked beautifully in the recipe!
I may try it with fresh apples next time.
It is an excellent fall flavor and I look forward to baking it as the days get chilly.
Who knew chocolate complimented apple so well!

*sigh* either I am terrible at searching the Hershey's site for recipes or they just did not add the ones from this spectacular book to the site!
Again. I will attempt to photo the recipe and post....must have feed back!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Brownies

Today is not a great day or a bad day... it is a very confusing day.
I got a promotion, but will be taking my new place sooner then anticipated. I will be in management, which is good. The original plan was get a week of training and then transition into it. Then a Co worker who has a parallel position had bad things happen... she has to move out of town suddenly. So, instead of gradual I will be trained by her today and then take her shifts the rest of the week, that would be the bad.
Means a crappy schedule and more importantly a friend is moving far away.

She used to bring in cookies every time she baked them, but we never really worked together enough for me to get them...they were always eaten by the time I got there. It soon became a running joke between us.
As a going away present I am making her cookies!
Well, brownies too.

Of course the cookies were no problem, just went with the new favorite
Chocolate Peanut butter Thumbprints!


As I was making them the 2 elder kids wandered in and began to help. They discovered I have the most amazing talent to make a ball of dough in a measuring cup of sugar magically roll around and get totally covered with the sugar.
That is the next trick they want me to teach them... heck I didn't know I could do it till I did it.

Eldest...errr...Raven wanted mostly to pick at the chips and chunks...sampling every step of the batter. Thunderous then mostly engaged in verbally discouraging her.
They both got some practice in on using the beater and the scarpers. I kept encouraging them to practice more. I didn't mention that they will be making their own dinner a lot more often so they had better practice fast.
I showed them how to layout all your ingredients before you start baking to be sure you have it all.
Raven loves the smell of vanilla, she asked me if there are any shampoo the smells like vanilla. I told her "Probably. You are old enough to make your own hair tonics, why don't you make some with vanilla?" She is thinking about it.

Thunderous made the observation that the brownies are the opposite of the cookies!
They happen to be on opposite pages in the cook book as well.
I think that means they balance each other.

It was simple to whip these up. The problem we have run into is we must have used much to small of a pan. It is taking about twice as long to bake as the instructions call for. Looking at it in the pan I am sure that is the problem. It rather looks like a cake instead of a brownie!

I, yet again, can not find the recipe on the Hershey's site to link to it for you. This time instead of typing it for you I took a picture of the page and will post it...let's see if you can see it okay.
You MUST let me know if this works!