anniversary cake for breakfast?

i felt kinda bad this morning when i realized that of the eleventy-two things i had to do this weekend, i got eleventy-one of them done but i forgot the most important one: make an anniversary cake for pbe. d'oh! then i realized that i actually did, it was just a breakfast coffee cake. yay!

on sundays, i have taken to baking breakfast items that my bunky and i can eat all week long. recently, i have been working on variations of the sour cream streusel coffee cake by nic from bakingsheet. my most recent incarnation was an apple almond sour cream streusel coffee cake. i used nic's basic recipe, except for the following twists: i subbed in 1/3 cup of almond meal for 1/3 cup of the flour; i subbed 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract for 1/4 teaspoon of the vanilla; i added a layer of chopped apples between the cake batter and the streusel topping; and i used almonds in the streusel mixture for the top. the apples increased the cooking time to almost 70 minutes (i baked this in a ceramic dish, so it takes longer anyway). if i had any dried cranberries in the house, i would have added them to the topping and maybe in the batter of the cake itself. cranberries, apples and almonds...yummy combo.

so anyway, happy anniversary to us! amazing that we've stuck with it for a year. for those of you not keeping score, there are three of us: mooncrazy and doodles are sisters and i (maltese parakeet, aka little bird) am mooncrazy's daughter and, hence, doodles' niece. it all started when doodles emailed me some links for food blogs and said she'd sure love to do something like that. i think i had it set up on blogger about five minutes later. the name came from mooncrazy, who had been saving it for a while to use on something good (her punk band never got off the ground). i have really enjoyed myself this past year. it's been a really great way to spend quality time with my geographically dispersed mother and aunt. it's a good excuse to cook more and be adventurous in the kitchen, which i really enjoy. i'm also thrilled to have had the opportunity to get back into photography. but most of all, i have enjoyed getting to know some cool food bloggers all over the country and around the world, with special shout outs to kitchen wench, c for cooking, soul fusion kitchen, copperpots and la vida dulce. so thanks to everyone for reading (and commenting) and keeping it fun for us. we'll try to keep it interesting for you!