Recovery week

So this is me this week!

As a matter of fact, in my Quo Vadis I wrote:
POSITIVE THOUGHTS
GOLDEN LIGHT
DO NOTHING
REST
And I wrote it across all the pages of the week.
I wrote that because last Friday I had some facial reconstruction surgery to repair some of the radiation damage.

Yup, it was unpleasant. Yup, it hurts. Yes it was a risk with the real possibility of dying tissue, but everything seems to have gone well and I’m Okay. <3

Today my little note to myself says: “What would someone who loves themselves do?”

Rest. Rest and more rest.
But today I also had to visit my plastic surgeon, so while I was up and about, I decided to bake myself a little treat.
Last week when I drove through Keremeos and stopped at the fruit and veggie stand, I bought a little pundit of apricots. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I should have known better because apricots so out of season very rarely taste very yummy. Actually, that’s my usual rule for all fruit and veg so no, I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, here I had these not so nice apricots at home.

My grandmother used to make a lovely fruity type coffee cake called a bublanina. Roughly translates to bubble cake. She made it every week and used all sorts of fruit in it. I decided to bake myself a bublanina as a treat (because right now I’m a poor baby so deserve fattening sugary treats…lol)

I took out my grandmother’s cookbook and found the bublanina recipe.
Yes, a very well used page!
I wish you guys could read Czech recipes. The language is so friendly. It’s as though the directions include you instead of being directed at you. For example, a line of this recipe reads: “Our mixed sugar, eggs, lemon and vanilla, we cream them together for 30 minutes.” This is how we do it. Oh yes, by hand…with a wooden spoon! Actually, truth be told, in the Kitchen Aid.

So I mixed up a little buttery, sugary dough, topped it with those apricots and a little sprinkling of blueberries, and popped it into the oven for 35 minutes.

That’s incidentally the time it took for the lawn service to finish making a racket at my neighbour’s next door.

Then I had a lovely, warm slice of my bublanina, and now it’s back to bed with me.

Bubble cake adapted from my grandmother’s recipe to bring it out of the middle ages.

1/2 cup organic cane sugar
1/4 cup softened butter
2 large eggs
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup yogourt
1 tbsp Grand Marnier (because, why not?)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
the tip of a knife worth of salt (seriously, that’s what it says)
what have you of fruit. I used a dozen apricots and a handful of blueberries. My grandmother’s best bublanina was always with cherries.

Pre-heat the oven to 350°F.

– Mix the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
– Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well in between, add the Grand Marnier and vanilla.
– Sift in the flour and baking powder, and the salt, then mix well.
– Finally, add the yogourt to create a thick dough to support the fruit on top.

– Pour the batter into a greased and lined baking tin of some kind. I used 9-inch springform tart tin.

– Prepare the fruit: slice the apricots, stone the cherries, halve the strawberries, etc.

– Scatter the fruit into the top of the batter and press lightly.

– Bake for 35-40 minutes, grandmother’s book reads “until rosy”.