last year, blogger mary, the food librarian began a new tradition. she decided to celebrate national bundt day(11/15) by baking 30 bundt (or similarly shaped cake) cakes, 1 each day for the days preceding and including november 15 for a total of 30 bundts in 30 days. she blogged about each one and then since she had so much fun with it, she did it again this year. oh, how i wished i could bake along with her and make one each day too. unfortunately, my work/writing/parenting/gardening/neighborhood watch schedules-otherwise known as my life, got in the way. this week i needed to make two cakes-one for the pot luck dinner at our monthly master gardeners meeting and one for the work session in the garden. it was an opportunity to make bundts!!!

yes, mary, i love big bundts too!

this one is the combination of a bundt and an upside-down cake. rather than use a fancy cake pan, i just used a plain tube pan. i cooked the syrup and poured it into the pan and then layered apple slices over the pan in a nice ring. then i carefully dolloped a pumpkin spice cake over the apples and baked it. after letting it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes, i inverted the cake onto the platter and here it is. it went over very well at the dinner.

for our work session this morning, i took the remaining pumpkin and made a cake batter with it. into about 1/3 of the batter, i stirred in some melted unsweetened chocolate and used that to make a ribbon in the center of the cake. we nibbled on cake and sipped chai tea while we devised a plan of action in the garden. we’ve got our priorities straight, a gardener must be properly prepared to work in the garden…check out the garden here.

here’s a big round of applause for mary, the food librarian and her big bundt celebration! let’s do this again next year!!!