next time i'll make cookies

You guys.  I found an amazing apple cake recipe that you should definitely try.  I don't recommend, however, baking it under the circumstances I did today.

We're selling our house, and this afternoon our realtor did an open house.  I had the brilliant idea to bake something autumn-y so as to make the place smell cozy, and at the same time ingratiate the property with any potential buyers.  Welcome!  Have some baked goods!  Now don't you want to buy this house?

So, interspersed with some last minute cleaning, I baked this amazing cake.  No really, it's amazing.  Applesauce cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting?  Yes please.  I didn't change anything, so I'm not going to type out the recipe here.  Instead, go over to Smitten Kitchen and check it out.  Trust me.)

My plan was to put the frosting on top and cut the whole thing into squares, then put the squares on a plate for the open house with a stack of napkins.  No need for forks, no need for dishes.  Sounds like a great plan, right?

Right.

Except.

To accomplish my make-the-house-smell-cozy agenda, I waited until a couple hours in advance to actually bake the cake.  So right off the bat you've got some time crunch pressure for added excitement.  Then factor in that cake doesn't cool down as fast as one might think (ahem, as fast as I thought), and you've got cinnamon cream cheese frosting getting slathered on a still-warm cake.  Mind you, that combination is DELICIOUS, but the frosting gets a bit runny and the cake crumbs get everywhere and the cake itself doesn't have very much structure once you cut it up.  Not as pretty as I'd hoped.

With 5 minutes left before Mr. Cecil and I had to clear out so the realtor could work his magic and show off our house, I was trying to salvage what I could of the haphazard, crumbly, looked-like-a-five-year-old-cut-them cake squares.  That was pleasant.

So the moral here is that you definitely need to make this cake.  Learn from my mistake, though, and pick a day when you have plenty of time and there's no pressure on the cake itself.

And the second moral, of course, is that there's an awesome house for sale -- if you know anyone in the market for an adorable home in the Greater Portland, Maine area, let me know!

Now go bake that cake!