Let him eat cake

My vacation time since I returned home has been a routine mix of movie attendance, Wii playing, internet surfing, TV watching, and daily exercise. That's perfectly fine, especially since it seems to be passing so quickly.

Tonight I got the itch to bake something. I was set on making espresso chiffon cake with fudge frosting until I realized I needed a food processor to make it. (I don't have one.) Instead I made a cranberry vanilla coffee cake.

While I may have left too little batter to top the cranberry layer, it's a small and inconsequential miscue for something that is absolutely delicious. It was easy to make, even if I'd never used a vanilla bean and had to deploy a blender for making the cranberry mixture, and yielded outstanding results. Doesn't that describe the ideal recipe?