Jade: Bitemyapple

I am the kind of girl who bakes 6 trays of brownies in 2 days using different recipes until I am absolutely happy with how fudgy and chocolatey they are; I make it a general rule to read and compare an average of 10 recipes from various sources before even attempting to try a new dish/dessert..because I know, if it doesn't come out the way I want it to, I will fuss and fret and redo everything from scratch and let's face it...it gets expensive especially in this economic climate.

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You can imagine the state I was in when I, surrounded by half a kilo of apples, peeled, cored and painstakingly diced, ready to be folded into my muffin batter, realized I had no cinnamon. Everyone knows apple without cinnamon is like a campfire without marshmallows.......almost criminal. But it was nearly 10 at night...so I baked them anyway. They weren't bad...they weren't great either. Not by my standards anyway.

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The thing about cookbooks and all the wonderful

cooking shows is while they show you, some in

more detail than others, how to make the perfect apple cake, no one tells you what to do when things don't go according to plan and the cake turns out less than perfect. Do you bin it? Think of the starving children.....Do you leave it out and pray your drunk housemate gets peckish? One sleepless night on, I am here to share my

attempt to rescue my cinnamon-less cake.

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For starters, I bought a big jar of cinnamon. Bah. Tore my muffins up, squished them into a

ramekin and sprinkled some cinnamon on top. Then I whisked some cream with vanilla and honey, folded in some cream cheese and draped the luscious mixture over the cake. Melted some butter, added some flour, brown sugar and salt and who can forget, a big pinch of cinnamon. It's a sad day when one has to stoop to taking their frustrations out on some ground up tree bark, but there you go. Popped the mixture into a preheated oven and 20 minutes later, I had some lovely buttery streusel, ready to be crumbled over my improvised apple cheesecake. I took a bite.......melty crumble, satiny cream, soft tangy apples with just enough bite and of course, that

hint of cinnamon I'd been waiting for all along....Not bad. Not bad at all.