This past week was a busy one at the restaurant.  Two off site events and a breakfast had me running around baking like a mad women and getting little sleep…

The off site event on Friday was the Home Sweet Home Dessert Tasting to benefit the Cambridge Housing Assistance Fund.  So, it was all me!!!  A few months ago I began fiddling with an idea for a cake using pecans (a “go to” southern ingredient, to keep in step with the restaurants roots) and cider jelly.  Cider jelly is a product that I came across last winter when we did a SLOW FOOD dinner at Hungry Mother, I made buttermilk doughnuts and filled them with the jelly — they were pretty amazing.  It is basically made from boiling apple cider till it hits the jelly point, it has a very intense and wonderful flavor that I thought would go well with pecans.  We order ours from Wood’s Cider Mill in Vermont, I believe this is one of the few places you can get it.

We were told that there would be 400 people would be attending the event so I made ALOT of cake.  Actually I made way too much cake, but they gave the left overs to the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter so it went to a good cause.  The event seems to have been a success and they raised a good amount of money.  It was fun to develop a new recipe and people really loved it.  The final cake was a pecan cake layered with cider jelly and brown sugar butter cream ( I used brown sugar and added a little molasses to deepen the flavor).  Here are some pics from the event.