Saturday, September 23, 2017

Cooking for a Crowd: Episode 9 - Applesauce Cake

I always ask Aaron's opinion when I'm planning a crowd meal. He is so good at giving me ideas and suggestions, and helps me not to stress over it all, even though the popular answer I seem to get from him is "Baby, I don't know! You're so much better at figuring out food than I am." Other times, he pops out with whatever is the first thing that comes to mind, and often it's a delicious, fairly easy meal to make. I don't think he realizes what a help he is when it comes to meal planning.

Maybe dessert is a little easier for him to come up with ideas though, because this was one of the times that he had an immediate suggestion: 

Applesauce cake.

Now I've never made applesauce cake before, so this was a completely random idea. Maybe by now you've gathered that I'm the kind of person who likes making new foods, so this suggestion seemed like good advice to me. I asked how he likes his applesauce cake, and he proceeded to tell me that it's simple to make and - just like how he eats every spice cake/bread- it has to be served with applesauce. I didn't have a recipe for the cake from his [growing up] farm days, so I began doing some research. It didn't take me a minute and I had a recipe to try! 

The day I was scheduled to serve dessert, we were expecting to serve around half the usual number. Normally I would need to make several pans (or at least a half-sheet pan) in order to provide enough to go around, but since we estimated 20 guests, a 9x13" pan would be sufficient. Of course, I can't make a new recipe without testing it first, so I doubled it and ended up putting 1+1/2x in the 9x13 pan, and put the other 1/2 recipe in a bread pan so we could sample it. 


***Pause typing*** Husband just called and asked if I could make some more this afternoon.

Okay, I'm back. Maybe that will get the point across on how seriously addicting this stuff is!

The day the meal was being served we had other obligations, so we didn't stick around long for dessert. When we left, around half of the pan had been consumed. I had cut it in 18 pieces, and from what I observed, it seemed to be just right for the smaller crowd that day. I did serve it with applesauce as well, but am unsure of how many quarts were eaten. We took over either 2 or 3 quarts.

This recipe is another one I hope to share with you one day, but I have some tweaking to do before that happens. Somehow one recipe isn't enough to fill the pan size it says, and also the baking time seems to be off. I need to make another batch (which clearly shouldn't be a problem) and try to work it out for you all.

My cost into ingredients I figured out at $2.08. The recipe called for walnuts, but I omitted them partially because I didn't have any, but also because it would be a huge added expense. Tack on two quarts of applesauce at .50/jar, and the dessert cost comes to $3.08. Divide by 18 pieces, and that leaves us with a cost of $0.17 per serving. I use fresh farms eggs that I get here locally, which are a considerable amount more than grocery store prices. Had I bought cheap store eggs, I could've reduced my total cost by 51 cents, bringing our cost per serving down to $0.14/piece.