Crisp WeatherorWhy I Baked Apple Cake

We were talking about it being autumn and what that meant. (Frankly, even at 53 years old, I still think I need to buy new saddle shoes in September.)

Heir 1 brightened up and said excitedly, "Fall is crisp weather!"

I felt a tinge of guilt. He wasn't talking about the cool autumn temperatures. He was referring to apple crisp.

Heir 1 loves crisp -- any crisp: peach crisp, blueberry crisp, cherry crisp...even the time I made a strawberry crisp that everyone else was rather ambivalent over. Heir 1 would rather have crisp than pie. He was ecstatic one year when, as a Christmas gift, I gave him a "Crisp-A-Month" for his very own -- Dirtman was not permitted to hijack Heir 1's crisps for breakfast.

Alas, Heir 1 has watched season after season go by this year and nary a crisp in sight. He has even had to endure The Promise of Crisp, only to find that the next day I had neither the energy nor inclination to bake one. To make matters worse, it was left to him to comfort me as I lamented the fact that I was such a loser of a mother that I couldn't even manifest a crisp for my first born child.

So last week I made a huge apple crisp with apples from our local and beloved Rinker Orchard, picked that day. And I would show you that crisp, only it came and went very quickly.

So this weekend rolled around and I was going to make another apple crisp when I remembered that each year I go through apple season making crisp after crisp and, when the local season is over, remember I've been wanting to make an apple walnut cake for myself.


That's right. For ME. I made a totally selfish dessert in spite of the fact that I had abused my first born with promises of Crisp Abundance while languishing in my pajamas watching TCM -- for month after month.

I suppose my punishment was that for the first time in a long time I attempted to take a photo was the first time in a long time that the sky over Shenandoah County clouded over with the threat of rain. The photos stink, but the cake was good and even Heir 1 was not too disappointed that it was not, in fact, crisp.

Only Humpty Dumpty looks like he has evil plans for the apple cake; but, then, he's been a disapproving Dumpty my entire life...

...but it finally rained!...