Sylvia's Scenario

I wanted to make an  apple pie  this year for the Fourth of July since it was our country's 250th birthday and what is more American than apple pie?  Since we were going to a large party, I decided to make a big slab apple pie that serves a couple dozen people.   Pie is my favorite thing to make so I was eager to make my first pie of the summer.  This pie is made on a cookie sheet so there is less filling and more crust (which is no problem because this crust is AMAZING). This works well for a potluck or large crowd because it's easy to serve.  It's a pie that is like serving browies or some other dessert bar, no gooey mess to deal with like with a conventional pie.   But it tastes like a perfect apple pie.   I have not made a slab pie before but I've eaten one.  My neighbor brought one to a barbecue we had at our house back in 2015 when she brought a  mixed berry slab pie  for dessert.  She gave me the recipe and I put it on m...

This is sort of a random recipe that I wasn't planning to post but my family all loved it so much that I knew it was a keeper.  I got the recipe from  Sally's Baking Addiction  at the spur of the moment when my 4-year-old grandson decided at the last minute he wanted a banana cake for his birthday. The only difference between my recipe and the original recipe is that I made my cake into a layered cake instead of putting it in a 9” X 13" pan...you know, to get that traditional birthday cake look and to get that birthday cake look that's decorated by a 6-year-old and 4-year-old. I also made  Beatty's Chocolate Cake  for Lauren, the same cake I made to celebrate all five of the July birthdays last year.    This year, we all got individual celebrations and cakes.  How lucky is that?                                      You can safely say that we all got...

I've made a lot of different types of chocolate cakes before but now I think this recipe will be my go-to chocolate cake.  Yesterday, we celebrated birthdays for five people in my family. Yes, five . We have a lot of July birthdays but since the grandkids were in Japan during their own two birthdays, we had to celebrate now that they are back and I made this chocolate cake. After I decorated it, it looked like this: Our 5-year-old granddaughter requested chocolate cake so I picked Ina Garten's Beatty's Chocolate Cake.  It was a huge success.  We let her blow out the candles and she was so thrilled.  But she was more thrilled eating it and even commented how good it was.  I told her I'd make it every year for her birthday if she wanted.    Everyone loved this cake.  It was super moist and chocolately.  As with many of my recipes that involve chocolate cake, it uses coffee to bring out the chocolate flavor. The batter was more runny than most ...