What to do with apples you bought on sale?

The other day at HyVee, I bought four pounds of apples. I thought about making apple sauce or apple butter, but truth be told I'm too lazy to go to all the work it entails--peeling, coring, canning. Now, a cake I can make. And I got lucky enough to find one on my first Google click.

The recipe is from Monica at Lick the Bowl Good and she adapted it from "Southern Cakes." I decided to bake this cake based solely on the picture. It looks amazing. And I really like glazes. That helped, too.

For supper I decided to make sweet and sour meatballs. I have frozen meatballs and hubby gets off at 7pm tonight, so I thought it would be a good late dinner. Now I just have to find the recipe.

There's always something it seems.

So I've tried bits and pieces of the cake. The cake itself tastes a little like a caramel apple and the topping is blondie-like. I think it'll be awesome together, but I won't be trying it until hubby gets home, so that's probably a good thing or it would all be gone. Not that he would care any, because he's not a dessert kind of guy. He wants his meal and that's it.

He's weird.

Now for the meatballs. I made a few changes from the original recipe that I included in my adapted recipe. I had no lemon juice, so I used three tablespoons of cider vinegar. Feeling lazy on this first snow day in Iowa, I didn't chop up an onion, but instead used a bottle of dried onion. And I put them in a crock pot instead of simmering them on the stove. The sauce I microwaved for three minutes to melt the brown sugar.

These were super simple to make and are a great late dinner. I was hoping to have something cooking away in the crock pot during the first snow fall and I did.

(The link for the recipes are in the title.)

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Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze
**adapted**
Apple Cake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups finely chopped apples


Brown Sugar Glaze:
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
3 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon sweetened, condensed milk


For the cake: 
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch pan (round or square) and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.Stir with a whisk to mix everything together.
3. In a large bowl, mix the eggs til light in color and foamy. Add the oil and vanilla and beat well.
4. Stir in the flour mixture with a spoon and continue stirring the batter til the flour disappears. Add the apples and nuts (if using) and stir to mix them into the batter.
5. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Place the hot cake on a wire cake. While it's still hot, prepare the glaze.


For the glaze: 
1. Combine all the ingredients into a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture comes to a gentle boil. Cook for 3-5 minutes.
2. Spoon the hot glaze over the still hot-from-the-oven cake. Let the glazed cake cool completely before serving straight from the pan.


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Sweet and Sour Meatballs
**adapted**

Your favorite meatball recipe

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 bottle dried onion

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed

3 tablespoons vinegar

1 cup ketchup

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1. In medium saucepan, fry onion in oil until tender. Add all other sauce ingredients and simmer 20 minutes.

2. Place in crock pot on high and cook for two hours.
3. Serve over rice.