Liquid Friday Book Blog

First, a little bit about what my weekends have looked like when I’m not gigging. We’ve been running to every farm, orchard, and spooky fun event we can find that fits around the doggies schedules and mine. I have five imps on the cusp of adulthood, so I’m as busy as a bee. One wants to sew his own costume, one wants to go shopping for his, another isn’t certain he is dressing up, and my oldest boy wants to wear his (with full make-up) to work… guess I’ll be face painting, too. My eldest will probably be going out and IDK what she’ll be wearing, but she has the make-up part down no matter what it will be.

It’s only two weeks until Halloween and I couldn’t be more excited! I love watching all the children in costumes and spooky fun with things like Fright Fest at Six Flags, Haunted Houses, Trunk or Treat events, and as a psychic reader(told you I was a professional entertainer) I love doing lots of fun parties. It’s a great way to meet and greet and of course use some of my talents-highly satisfying for me.

Octoberfest Celebration

In November, everything begins to slow down as enter the holiday season, so this is really the last chance to kick up your heels. The farms and orchards are full of produce. Craft stores are full of spooky odds and ends that will probably end up on my shelves and around the house, because we’re spooky all year at home. It’s like a month long Mardi Gras for me and I love every moment of it.

Those apples are almost black, but so delicious!

Spoils of war, well… they had to find some with green that were low enough to pick. The tarter the better.

Look at all those pumpkins! I can almost smell the pumpkin bread.

While I wait for my water to boil for a cup of tea, I’m going to tell you what just happened- my newest book Knot A Psychic is now available on paperback and Audiobook in addition to Kindle on Amazon. Everything went through so quickly, I suspect they are using A.I. As an IT, I’m not a fan of A.I. endeavors. There are uses for the technology, but every gain comes with some risk, so be careful. No A.I.’s were harmed in the making of any of my books. When I run out of ideas, I take a long walk with my dogs and inspiration finds me. I like to flesh out my characters in my head first before committing them to Word and arguing with it about the spellings. Yes, culantro is a word. It’s an herb in Puerto Rican cooking often autocorrected to cilantro, grr! But more on cooking later.

In any case, despite my unseen arguments with technology, I’ve been writing code since 1986 and am now covering DOS commands with my son who is studying IT since many of the Linux/Unix commands are the same. Being a geek for a kid completely paid off and I hope he finds his passion in computer security. The hard part is to land that first IT job.

My mind is wandering today. I have six books to continue working on but I’m thinking about Monkey Bread and candy apples, or maybe candy apple topped monkey bread-that might be over the top sweet. A girl has her vices, and even on the diabetic diet I do eat carbs, I just count them.

Let’s do this. I’m going to post a recipe below for the quickest easiest Monkey Bread you’ll ever make, instead of a cocktail this week. Even the hubby comes running for this one.

Easy Monkey Bread

Supplies:

Bundt pan

Large Mixing Bowl

Kitchen Scissors

Ceramic bowl

Knife

Cutting board

Oven- sorry no microwaves for this recipe

Ingredients:

1-2 tart apples (if you got a huge apple 1 is plenty)

3 canisters your favorite oven bake biscuits

1 1/2 cups sugar (I use 3/4 cup organic raw sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar, but whatever you prefer will work)

2 teaspoons powdered Ceylon cinnamon

2 sticks unsalted butter (1 cup butter spread if you’re watching your fats)

Here’s what to do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Melt Butter in ceramic bowl in microwave-a few seconds at a time until liquid-save the wrappers to grease your Bundt pan. if you are making a bigger batch, you can freeze your butter wrappers for next time to need to grease something.
3. Add butter, sugar, and cinnamon to mixing bowl and give it a good stir
4. Cut your biscuits into fourths or smaller and add to the mixing bowl, try and coat all the pieces in that buttery sweet cinnamon goodness
5. Core and dice your apple(s) and add to the mixing bowl. If you don’t like apple peels, you can remove them before dicing.
6. Stir everything in the bowl until well combined and dump into your Bundt pan.
7. Place the Bundt pan in a well heated oven and bake for 25-35 minutes until golden brown and well caramelized. It is okay to over bake this a little if you’re afraid it won’t turn out nicely. An alternative is using a lined and greased bread pan-parchment paper. It has gotten me out of a lot of sticky situations.
8. Let cool slightly.
9. Turn out your Bundt cake onto a ceramic plate and serve warm.
10. If you are looking to be completely decadent serve with vanilla ice cream or your favorite cream cheese icing.
11. Enjoy!